Here is my story on the project and tips for the cookies. I'll reserve an entirely separate post for the icing. Yes, the whole thing - cookies and icing - is that involved. Now I understand why bakeries are charging $3-4 per cookie! They are seriously underpaid!
In preparation for Sydney's upcoming birthday, I decided to include those decorated sugar cookies as party favors for all the kids. So cute, right? And, as I mentioned, so expensive too. Hey, why not make them myself? Oh sure - not only am I not much of a baker, I really have little patience for tedious details. Perfect.
Realizing this was no project I could just whip up the day before her party, I decided to do a test batch. There's a lot to practice - icing consistency, color, decorations, cookie cutting, etc. And you know there will be all sorts of lessons learned from the first round of practice. I was not disappointed.
To get started, here is the link to the sugar cookie and royal icing recipe compliments of TomKat Studio (my go-to for all make-you-feel-like-a-slouch creative ideas) via Sweetopia. RECIPES.
I did a little research, checked my supplies and made a quick trip to Michael's for a few more. Ready! I originally planned to make fleur de lis cookies and decorate them purple and gold (yellow). But halfway into my project, I realized the fleur de lis shape was perhaps a little advanced and delicate for me so I switched to a cute flower design.
I took one look at the 5 cups of flour in the recipe and decided it would be smart to cut the recipe in half for the test batch. Thank goodness I'm so smart. Even in half, I made about 18 cookies and still had leftover dough but just couldn't bring myself to make them. This is a T-E-D-I-O-U-S process!
The website offers all sorts of tips and even video tutorials but let me add a few of my own.
First let me address the process. There is a very specific method to rolling, chilling and cutting the dough. And you will have to do it multiple times for the same batch of dough. I tried it a few different ways and realized that the order given to me in the recipe is for good reason.
1. For reasons that will soon become clear, I recommend splitting your dough into 2-4 separate balls to be rolled and chilled and cut. Each time you cut out your cookies, you'll have a lot of extra in-between dough. It has to be balled up, rolled and chilled all over again before you can cut. This can add a lot of down time to the overall process. If you have separate balls, you can work in stages. While you're cutting and loading the first tray of cookies, another ball is already being chilled and ready for cutting as soon as you put the first into the oven. Make sense?
2. Roll out the dough between two pieces of parchment paper. I have a pastry sheet and might use that next time underneath to keep it from slipping around on the counter, but using parchment between the dough and the roller really is quite helpful. After I rolled it out, I used my hands over the parchment to make sure it was all smooth and even. The recipe says you can roll it out more once it is chilled but I think it best to just go ahead and prep it to be able to cut as soon as you remove it from the fridge.
Thickness is key here. My first batch of cookies was too thick. They spread a little and then broke in a few spots when I was transferring them. I made the second and third batches a little thinner and it seemed to work better. Roughly 1/8 of an inch in thickness. I think. This is still a work in progress.
3. Chill. The recipe states to chill the dough for an hour. I let my initial batch chill for probably 2 hours while I did some work. Not good. The dough got too cold and cracked a little. Not that it is unrepairable - it just needs to warm back up a little and then can be rolled/molded again but what a pain! In between rolled batches, I probably let the dough chill for 20-30 minutes. I think that is sufficient.
4. Cut. This was harder than I thought. Be sure to press hard on ALL points of your cookie cutter to be sure the cut is a clean one. And don't try to wiggle it about... you'll just end up with a deformed cookie shape. Cut as many cookies out of your rolled dough as possible. Then I used a thin icing spatula to help remove the in-between cookie dough leaving behind the beautiful shapes. Sounds easy but there always seemed to be some fringe dough trying to hang onto that cookie. It's important to get nice crisp shapes but if you mess with it too much you can damage the edge of the cookie, deform it or completely destroy it.
At this point, I probably should have just transferred the whole parchment sheet with my perfectly cut cookie shapes onto a sheet pan and put them in the oven. Instead, I used my spatula to lift them up and onto a clean parchment lined cookie sheet. The process of moving them is tricky... especially if you have a very detailed cookie cutter such as my fleur de lis. And, if the dough has warmed too much, it's very easy to all of a sudden lose a corner of the cookie. Or deform the shape. Argh.
Anyway, just be very very careful in this process, whatever you decide to do. And the good news is that this dough is very forgiving - you can reshape it once it's on the cookie sheet or ball it up and start all over.
Don't forget to re-roll that extra cookie dough and stick it in the fridge to chill.
5. Bake. Easiest part. Recipe says 8-10 minutes. My oven (on convection mode) requires the full 10 minutes but check yours after 8 just to be sure.
6. When the cookies are finished baking, give them a few minutes before trying to move them. They are still doing a little internal baking once they come out of the oven and too much movement too soon can cause breakage. The great thing about parchment paper is that you can carefully slide the sheet right off of a flat cookie tray and onto a cooling rack in one smooth move without damaging the cookies.
7. Give them plenty of time to cool and then ice! I had a lot of breakage with my first batch. I think it was due to 2 things - 1) they were too thick and 2) the design was detailed and just had too many opportunities for cracking. In this picture you can see one such fatality. Many more followed. But also notice the slightly deformed and not-so-clean edges. This was probably one of the first cookies I cut and transferred. I had a lot to learn.
8. Take your next batch of dough from the fridge - cut and bake and repeat!
Coming up next time... icing! It's a workout!
sigh
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