The Decorated Cookie » cookies

family portrait cookies and other cookie gift ideas for Mother’s Day

meaghanmountford — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:33:53 +0000

Followers may notice my recent obsession with these portrait cookies. I started with this gift for my niece. The next year I made these favors for her art-themed birthday party. And now, portrait cookies for my mom for Mother’s Day.

This is my mom.

This is my brother and his family.

This is my sister and her family.

And this is me and my family.

Seriously, the likenesses are, ahem, uncanny. No really. It’s as if I studied the fine art of portraiture.

Gift-buying in my family is never easy. We all have way too much clutter and need very few things. That’s why I always turn to cookies. They can be personalized and they never leave clutter. Only crumbs (hahahaha…. groan).

Here are some favorites of Mother’s Day past:

all about mom Mother’s Day cookies

preppy cookies

over-the-rim cookies for mom’s tea

And of course, there are plenty of flower-themed ideas. Felt flower cupcake toppers, gerbera daisy cookie pops, carnation cookie pops, bite-size daisy cookies, how to make a flower cookie arrangement, springtime marshmallows.

to make Mother’s Day family portrait cookies… I cut out rectangle cookies with my cookie dough. Bake and let cool completely. Then I prepared my royal icing and tinted it white and gold with Americolor Soft Gel Pastes (Bright White and Egg Yellow). I prepared a disposable decorating bag with coupler and tip, size “4″. I filled the bag with the gold icing and closed with a rubber band. I piped rectangles on the cookies, leaving a border. Then, I switched the tip to size “3″ and piped the frame part. After the gold set a bit, I thinned the white icing to flooding consistency, filled an empty decorating bag, snipped the tip and piped to fill the frames. Let the cookies dry super duper well, overnight. And then I drew with the portraits with edible writers. For basic cookie decorating how-tos click HERE. For tips on buying and using edible writers, click HERE.

Feel free to share (nicely)! While my blog's photographs and text are protected by copyright, I do allow (and encourage) you to share ONE photograph with credit to "the decorated cookie" and link to this blog post. PLEASE don't reprint any part of the blog post and PLEASE don't post a photo without credit. Thank you!

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flower puzzle cookies

meaghanmountford — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:51:09 +0000

I suppose it’s only fair that if my brother had to work for his birthday cookies, my sister would, too. And I had to make sure my two, young nieces have my sister assemble these flowers before eating them, because she’s good at finding loopholes. For the record, she’s also good at throwing parties, being a mom, sharp jokes, discerning the character of others, giving advice and yelling while driving.

The cookie package contains four stems, five leaves, four flower centers and twenty-four petals. I included a note of explanation, but I think she might have even figured it out on her own. She’s a smartie. (I almost wrote “one smart cookie,” but then I figured you’d judge me for the bad pun.)

And by the way, to make sure these were assembled before eating, my nieces took the liberty of doing the assembling themselves. Here they are in action:

And here’s the final result. Interesting. I never thought to do multi-colored petals, but I like them much better than my own, boring, monotone ones. Kids are smart. (And these cuties are also available for any lucrative modeling gigs or Hollywood commercials.)

to make flower puzzle cookies

you will need:*

cookie dough

royal icing

circle cookie cutter

leaf cookie or fondant cutter

knife or dough scraper

heart cookie cutter

food coloring

disposable decorating bags

couplers

size “3″ and/or “4″ decorating tips

rubber bands

sprinkles (optional)

*Find the cookie cutters at specialty shops or in the craft store, perhaps as part of cookie or fondant cutter sets. You’ll also find the decorating bags, couplers, decorating tips and sprinkles in the craft store. I used a 1 1/4-inch circle, 2-inch and 3-inch leaves, and a 2-inch heart (the heart is for the petals). For the decorating tips, use any size you prefer. I chose a mix of “3″s and “4″s. For food coloring, I suggest Americolor Soft Gel Pastes, available in specialty stores or online. Leaf Green, Electric Green, Electric Pink, Orange, Turquoise, and Egg Yellow used here.

step one: Prepare the cookie dough according to the recipe. Chill and roll out on a floured surface and cut out your pieces: Circles for the flower centers and leaves for the, um, leaves. To make the stems, I used a dough scraper to cut out 1/2-inch by 4-inch rectangles. To make the petals, I cut a heart shape in half vertically, smoothing the sides with my fingers a bit. Bake and let cool completely.

step two: Prepare the royal icing according to the recipe. Divide and tint your preferred colors. I made yellow for the centers, pink, orange, and turquoise for the petals, and two shades of green for the stems and leaves. Prepare a decorating bag with coupler and tip for each color, fill and close the bags tightly with rubber bands.

step three: Decorate your cookies. Decorate however you like best. I outlined each cookie first and let set about 15 minutes. I then piped to fill each cookie. I used one consistency of icing, in between an outline consistency and a flooding consistency, so I could both outline and fill with the same decorating bag. For more tips on basic cookie decorating, click HERE. To make the flower centers, I piped and filled a circle with yellow icing then immediately coated with yellow sprinkles. TIP: For easy decorating (where you don’t have to worry about the icing consistency, or seeing the “lines” of icing), just outline and fill the cookie and immediately coat in the same color of sprinkles.

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New Year’s Eve from the archives

meaghanmountford — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 23:52:58 +0000

Yikes, going through my archives for New Year’s Eve posts turned up only a few. I’ve been remiss! And I’ll likely still be remiss what with the addition of a wailing two-and-a-half week old to our house. To be fair, she only wails on occasion, about 20 times a day. Then she sleeps all precious-like and you forget what the wailing sounds like til it starts again. And then the five year old gripes that the 2 week old is “freaking out.” But then again, “freaking out” is the five year old’s new most-used phrase. So everyone freaks out.

So maybe I’ll make something this week for New Year’s. Maybe. What are you doing on the 31st? Anything wild and crazy? Or are you baking anything special? Because I need some ideas…

These almost-midnight clock cookie pops were one of the first posts I ever wrote on this blog four years ago. Find the how-tos HERE.

I even made a video how-to for these crazy easy sparkly marshmallow party pops. Don’t laugh.

Find the video HERE and find the written how-tos HERE.

And here’s an easier, bite-size version of the almost midnight cookies, except that I totally messed up the time. Yeah, that says 11:00. (Shake your head at me now.) Find those how-tos HERE.Tweet

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gingerbread kids and the history of gingerbread cookies

meaghanmountford — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 19:00:10 +0000

Just wanted to send my best wishes to you all for a happy, healthy holiday season! I made these gingerbread boys and girls earlier this month for my daughter’s class. I used my gingerbread cut-out cookie recipe and royal icing recipe. They kicked off a study of fairy tales with these…

And because I’m a total nerd, below is a (large) excerpt from my first book (now out of print), Cookie Sensations. I include a chapter on the history of the decorated cookie, including gingerbread. So if you’re a nerd like me, enjoy!!

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GINGERBREAD COOKIES

Excerpt taken from my book, Cookie Sensations, published in 2007.

Gingerbread

No discussion of the decorated cookie is complete without a look at gingerbread. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, gingerbread, derived from the Latin name for ginger, “Zingebar,” came to be known from the fifteenth century onwards as a cake flavored with ginger and treacle (a British type of syrup) shaped into men, animals, and letters, and usually gilded (brushed with gold coloring). Gingerbread was primarily a fairground delicacy in Medieval times throughout France, Germany, Holland and England. Some English village traditions requested unmarried women to eat gingerbread “husbands” at fairs to increase the likelihood of meeting a man.

Shaping gingerbread into people is a centuries-old tradition. Queen Elizabeth I is said to have ordered gingerbread cut into the shapes of her courtiers. In Belgium, cookies were cut into folk characters such as St. Nicholas. In the 1600s, gingerbread men were sold in London streets, possibly inspired by the folk legend of the Gingerbread Boy who jumped out of his oven.

In the tale, a woman desperate for a boy of her own bakes a gingerbread boy and dresses him with currants, cinnamon, colored sugar, and chocolate. But the cookie jumps out of the oven and out the door singing, “Run, run, as fast as you can; Can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man.” He escapes all whom he encounters until his fatal outwitting by a sly fox. The legend found its way to America from England, though in Colonial days the tale was named “Johnny Cake.”

The enchantment of gingerbread inspires great literary intrigue. Gingerbread was one of the sweets brought to Sir Thopas in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales of 1386. “They fette hym…real spicerye/ Of Gyngebred that was ful fyn/ And lycorys and eek comyn/ With sugre that is trye.”² Shakespeare, too, in Loves Labours Lost, writes of sacrifice in the name of gingerbread: “‘An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread.’”³ Dorothy Wordsworth shared this desperate love. The English prose writer (and younger sister to the poet Williams Wordsworth) found gingerbread tasty enough to include in her journal. In January 1803, despite the bitter cold, she and her brother left home in search of gingerbread to satisfy their cravings.

Gingerbread is not always held in such high esteem in the literary imagination. The British poet, William Cowper, in his 1783 poem, Table Talk, warns of the dangers of falling below one’s potential and of settling for lesser substitution: “As if the Poet, purposing to wed, should carve himself a wife in ginger-bread.”⁴ Such seems quite a reversal in sentiment from the aforementioned women at fairs eating gingerbread “husbands.”

Similar to gingerbread, “lebkuchen” was used in Germany to build “Hexenhaeusle,” or “witches’ houses,” romanticized and popularized by the story of Hansel and Gretel when published in 1812 as part of the Grimm brothers’ collected German folktales. Hansel and Gretel, seen as a drain on scarce resources, are abandoned by their poor parents despite their father’s reluctance. Alone in the woods, their furtive bread crumb trail home eaten by birds, Hansel and Gretel wander for days, starving, until they come across a house “made of bread” with a roof “made of cake and the windows of sparkling sugar.”⁵ They tear off pieces and stuff themselves, unknowing the cruel, old woman within purposely constructed the house to entice, trap, bake, and eat children. But Hansel and Gretel outfox the old crone and push her into the oven, saving themselves.

Cookies in America

Gingerbread spread to America by European settlers and was also popular at fairs and festivals. New England recipes for flat cookies cut into patriotic shapes were created for “Muster Day” or “Election Day.” Prior to the Revolution, shapes often depicted a king, but later, the American Eagle. The cookies were handed out to wives and children when militias gathered for officer election or for military training.

Other cookies had already made their home in America in recipe, if not in name. Martha Washington’s “Booke of Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats,” a manuscript “curiously copied by an unknown Hand sometime in the seventeenth century,” was in Martha Washington’s possession from 1749 until 1799. The recipes for “cakes” are similar to what we today call “cookies.” For sugar cakes, the baker is instructed to “take 2 pounds of flower, & one pound of sugar, & youlks of 2 eggs, & a spoonfull of sack, & a spoonfull of rosewater, & make it up into paste with melted butter & roule it out pritty thin.” A beer glass is suggested to cut the cookies before baking in an oven “meanly hot with stone downe.”⁶

The cookbook even includes a recipe similar to the Royal Icing of today, dubbed “Paste Royall.” It is made with refined sugar, cinnamon, ginger and a “grayne of musk,” made into a paste. The decorator then is to “print it with your moulds. Then gild it, & serve it up.” For white paste royall, the baker is to put the sugar into an “alleblaster morter with an ounce of gum tragacant steeped in rose water.”⁷ Fortunately, today we have a bottle of white frosting color to achieve better results.

Gingerbread recipes are not forgotten, made with a gallon of “ye purest honey” boiled on the fire. Then, the baker adds “good white wine vinegar” to make the “scum rise” so you can remove it before adding a “quart of strong ale.” Ginger, licorice, anise seeds, red sanders, and a peck of grated bread are added before the baker presses the dough in molds to “make it into what fashion you pleas.”⁸ Another recipe suggests adding claret wine to make “culler’d” gingerbread.

Such collections of handwritten recipes were common at this time, as printed cookbooks were scarce. But the popularity of publications dedicated to good housekeeping and cookery is not specific to modern times. Gervase Markham’s early seventeenth century volume, the English Huswife, included advice on cooking, planting, brewing, clothing, and curing the plague. Its success spurred other publications into the eighteenth century. American colonists relied primarily on British presses, but British authors paid little attention to the needs of the New World and to American cuisine.

Amelia’s Simmons’s first edition of American Cookery in 1796, a practical, inexpensive, paperback book, changed this. Her book included recipes such as “Johny Cake” (sic) and “Indian Slapjacks” that required distinctly American ingredients. Simmons’s is the first cookbook to use the American term “cookie,” derived from the Dutch “koekje.”

Noteworthy is Simmons addition of a newly-born cooking method of using chemical leavening in doughs, similar to our baking powder or soda. Prior, bakers had beat air into eggs, but by 1796, an anonymous American woman had added a chemical to produce carbon dioxide. Simmons’s cookbook is the first known to suggest adding pearlash to gingerbread and cookie dough, a substance primarily composed of potassium carbonate and used to make soap and glass.

Simmons’s gingerbread cookie recipe calls for molasses in lieu of treacle to customize the sweet to her American audience. The dough combines cinnamon, coriander or allspice, “put to four tea spoons pearl ash, dissolved in half pint water,” flour, molasses, and butter (“if in summer rub in the butter, if in winter, warm the butter”). The mixture is kneaded and washed with egg whites and sugar.⁹

Simmons’s sugar cookie recipe calls for a pound of sugar, “boiled slowly in half pint water,” and the baker is to “feum well and cool, add two tea spoons pearl ash dissolved in milk, then two and half pounds flour, rub in 4 ounces butter, and two large spoons of finely powdered coriander feed, wet with above.” The dough is then rolled half an inch thick and “cut to the shape you please.”¹⁰

Cookie cutters

In America, molds and boards gradually disappeared in favor of emphasizing the outline of the desired shape. German settlers in Pennsylvania shaped gingerbread by hand into men, often displaying the cookies in windows. The English cut dough with a glass or tea cup. Martha Washington’s cookbook suggests cutting dough with a beer glass, as mentioned earlier. The idea of placing a metal rim around the outline of a carved mold originated in the mid 1600s, and by 1750, the cookie cutter as a shape independent of a mold came into being.

The 19^th c tin industry developed the art of cookie cutters. Tinsmiths used traveling shops, packing their materials and belongings on wagons. Most carried cutter patterns to ensure uniformity, but they would make cookie cutters to housewives’ requests if need be. With increased machinery, by the end of the century cookie cutters were sold in catalogs and stores.

Cookie cutters were first hung as tree ornaments in shapes such as stars, moons, suns, toys, animals, and humans. With the rise of Christmas as a commercial holiday, shapes of the season, such as wreaths, Santa, and stockings, soon prevailed. American cookie cutters of the 1800s were thick and heavy, usually with flat backs and sometimes with strap handles. Air holes cut in the back allowed air to escape to free the dough from the cutter more easily and were often large enough for a lady’s finger to fit through if an extra push was necessary. Shapes at this time included hearts, horses, rabbits, birds, long-dressed ladies, high-hatted men, horsemen, leaves, and flowers.

Bridge card party sets, with diamonds, clovers, spades, and hearts, were popular in the early 1900s, available in catalogs such as Sears Roebuck or The Bruce & West Manufacturing Company. With the rise of advertising, baking powder companies and flour mills began to sell cookie cutters with their printed slogans. By the 1920s, cookie cutters were mass produced in aluminum. Aside from more choices, a surprising consistency and uniformity among shapes survived the century, and the basic shapes remain the same today.

But throughout the decades, companies produced cookie cutters unique to their era. Like any relics from popular culture, cookie cutters lend insight into the interests and lives of a generation. Pillsbury released the Comicooky Cutters series in 1937, including paper stickers to apply to the cookies in the likeness of comic characters from Moon Mullins, Gasoline Alley, or Dick Tracy. In the late 1940s, the Educational Products Company sold Blondie and Dagwood cookie cutter sets, complete with their children and Daisy the dog.

Wrigley Spearmint Gum advertised Troll kits for kids through the cookie cutter company, Mirro, in the mid-1960s. For fifty cents, the kit included an aluminum troll cookie cutter with decorating tips. They recommended sticking “tiny candies for cooky eyes” or to sprinkle the top with “wigs of shaggy, tinted coconut” to get laughs and “score a fantastic hit.”¹¹

Plastic cookie cutters became popular in the 1950s. Hallmark introduced their first set of cookie cutters in 1971, offering brightly-colored plastic cutters with incredible variety. Cutter shapes included not only a wide assortment of holiday designs, but baby cookies, Disney characters, Snoopy and Charlie Brown, the Muppets, and Raggedy Ann and Andy.

Today, you can find copper, aluminum, plastic, or tin cookie cutters in just about any shape you can imagine for the twenty-first century: martinis, the little black dress, an electric guitar, a bikini, a hula girl, a fighter jet, pi, a lap top computer, the space shuttle…

A long history of shaping and decorating cookies precedes us. I’m not sure why these representations seem so specific to sugary treats. I’ve not heard of a carrot decorated as a British King or a meatloaf to mimic Raggedy Ann. Perhaps it’s the natural indulgence of sweets. There is something powerful and gluttonous about ingesting cookie symbols of religion, popular culture, nature, animals, and characters. We can consume tasty versions of the world by creating edible art, just by thoughtfully shaping dough and adding color.

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Cookie HQ at HERSHEY’S Kitchens: My Video and Photo Shoot

meaghanmountford — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 11:49:39 +0000

You probably don’t know this, but last month I was treated to a fantabulous trip to the Hershey’s Headquarters? Wait, you might know. Because I talked about it HERE. And HERE. And HERE. Sheesh. I talk too much. Anyway, I joined a dozen bloggers to make yummy holiday videos in the Hershey’s Test Kitchens with the wonderful Linda Stahl. And I finally get to share with you some of what I did while in incredible HERSHEY’S Kitchens. You can find all of the videos the Baker’s Dozen created HERE, and all of our packaging ideas for holiday sweets HERE. Be sure to check out the rest of this creative crew!

THE VIDEO:

5 Ways to Use Melted HERSHEY’S Chocolate

First, I made a video on 5 Ways to Use Melted Chocolate, HERE, with the HERSHEY’S kitchen team. I melt HERSHEY’S Premier White Chocolate Chips, Milk Chocolate and Semi-Sweet Chips to make chocolate snowflake cupcake toppers, to fill holiday molds, to drizzle over treats, to make marshmallow dippers and to make cute Rudolph pretzel rods. I promise despite my dull tone, I really AM excited to be there? I never said I was a TV natural, folks. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve said that I’m a nervous wreck when the cameras go on.

Some more tips:

Melting Chocolate. Melt chocolate either in the microwave or on the stove-top. On the stove-top, use a double boiler or rest a bowl over a pan of simmering water to slowly melt the chocolate chips and to avoid direct heat. Or, nuke in a microwave-safe bowl at 50 percent power for 1 1/2 minutes, then 30 second intervals, until melted. My favorite method is to nuke directly in a disposable decorating bag. Easy clean-up and total control over piping. Snip from 1/8-inch to 1/4-inch from the tip of the decorating bag to pipe.

Chocolate Snowflakes. After lining a baking tray with parchment paper, I just piped white chocolate snowflakes, topped immediately with white sprinkles, and refrigerated until set.

Chocolate Molds and Drizzling Chocolate. The decorating bags make filling holiday molds super easy. No spoons and drips and drops! And using the bags, you can easily control a chocolate “drizzle” by piping back and forth over cookies, cupcakes, brownies, pretzels, anything that goes with chocolate.

Marshmallow Dippers. Here, I just skewer a marshmallow, dip in melted chocolate, then roll in a mixture of HERSHEY’S Cocoa and granulated sugar. You can also roll in crushed candy canes or in finely chopped HERSHEY’S candy bars. I think the Cookies n’ Creme would be perfect.

Rudolph Pretzel Rods. To make these cuties, I first melted HERSHEY’S white chocolate chips in a decorating bag and piped antlers on a baking tray lined with parchment. Then, I dipped a pretzel rod in a bowl of melted HERSHEY’s Milk Chocolate chips and immediately lay on top of the antlers. Add two candy eyes (found at the craft store) and a red candy nose, refrigerate to set, and you have Rudy!

THE PHOTO SHOOT:

HERSHEY’S HUGS Sugar and Spice Blossom Cookies on a Stick: A Gift Idea for Your Kids’ Class

Next up, I had an assignment. To come up with a gift idea for packaging my favorites, the HERSHEY’S HUGS Sugar and Spice Blossoms, as a sweet treat to bring to your child’s class. Yeah, cookies and lollipop sticks and HERSHEY’S Kisses. Tough assignment, huh? Bringing treats to your child’s class poses a unique challenge. You need to bake in bulk, usually quickly and cost efficiently (if you’re like me, a mom with limited time and funds). You need to package the cookies just as quickly and cost efficiently, but still appealing to little hands, which also means packaging one, small cookie to look bigger. My go-to with kids? You know the answer. Lollipop sticks. If it’s possible to put anything on a stick, put it on a stick. To make these, simply, insert a lollipop stick–found at the craft store–into the ball of cookie dough on the tray. Bake as usual, add your HUGS, and let the cookies cool completely and the chocolate set well before packaging in cellophane bags with ribbons and tags.

FIND THE FULL PHOTO SHOOT HERE AT HERSHEY’S

MORE PLACES TO VISIT:

Be sure to check out my PINTEREST page on holiday sweets with HERSHEY’S products.

Find more information HERE at Cookie Headquarters.

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