Holiday Cookie Exchange #1 hosted by So Cal Foodie
This has been such a long process for one blog entry, but I have say that I had fun doing it. I spent the better part of Friday mixing and baking the cookies. The process is not hard but it is time consuming. I had to make the templates...
Then make three batches of the cookie dough...
The three batches of cookie dough were cut into two rolls each to make rolling out the dough easy. After the dough warmed up a little bit, I rolled out the dough and cut out two of each one of the templates.
Once the cookies are baked I made sure that I had two of each one of the 8 templates that I had cut. Plus I had to have graduated sized of rounds for each layer. There needed to be two of each one of them also.
I matched up all the stars with the round spacers. I also made some royal icing and iced the cookies.
Next I assembled the tower according to the sizes and it made a tree...
Basic Cookie Dough
1 cup margarine (if you are not going to eat this, then save the money and use the margarine, if not then use butter)
1 Cup Sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 TBS milk
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
Cream margarine and sugar until fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and milk and then blend well. Add the flour in 1/2 cup at a time and mix well. Divide the dough in half and wrap in either wax paper or plastic wrap and chill for two hours until firm enough to roll out.
Preheat oven to 375
Baking pan: ungreased cookie sheet or jelly roll pan.
Bake for 8-10 minutes depending on the size of the cut out. Let cookies cool for a few minutes on the cookie sheet and then transfer to a cooking rack.
Royal Icing
3 1/2 cups (1 pound) Confectioners' sugar
3/4 tsp cream of tarter
3 egg whites
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix for 5 minutes (you can use a hand mixer, a whisk or a Kitchen Aid). Scrap down the sides to make sure all the sugar is mixed in. If you store the icing for for more than a few hours, cover with plastic wrap directly on the icing. This icing works great with coloring!
posted by vlb5757 @ 11:32 AM
10 Comments:
OMG! I'm soooo impressed! Very cool. I want that royal icing recipe too if you're willing to share (you know me with my crazy cake decorating aspirations!). I'd like to have one of those as a decoration at a holiday party :)
Opps. I am sorry I forgot to post the recipe. I will amend the post and put it on there first thing tomorrow. The tree does not look like the one in the book. The royal icing was too watery to pipe the cute little flowers on every star tip. I found that out as mine ran together and looked like little green M&Ms. So I changed to plan B and thickened up the icing and then just threw on the tree. It didn't turn out the way I hoped, but after I got to looking at it I really liked anyway, so all's well that ends well!
If you buy 8 different sizes of star cookie cutters you can do the same thing on a smaller scale. Or you can make your own star templates. Each one has to be just a bit smaller than the one before. I wish I had time to mail them to you. Do you want mine since I have the book?
Vickie this tower of cookies is so cute. I saw this idea once before and thought that it was such a good idea. You can decorate for a party AND have dessert! Thanks so much for participating and helping me get this thing started. Two more weeks for this holiday, then maybe you'll want to host a Valentine's Day exchange?
NOW...DOWN TO BUSINESS...
OOOOhhhhh I was SO excited to get your box in the mail! I haven't gone through it all, but I could smell the lavendar coming out of the box before I finished opening it! As soon as I'm done here, I am going to rip those little packs open and see what goodies there are! Thanks so much (in advance)! I'll be updating my blog with the story of the box this week.
I had a slight delay in getting everyone's posts up today...long story short, I forgot that I had a trip to Vegas planned for this Thurs., Fri., and Sat, so I had to get my sister to help me out by putting up the post on Friday and updating it once or twice. I'm home now and just got everything updated. I'll get some photos from my trip up this week!
What a GREAT idea! In Sweden we always make gingerbread houses but I can't do this kind of things here because it's so humid that everything collapse!! I probably should make an eternal one in whatever it is called in English and take it out every xmas! I think I'll do that this year!!
Vickie,
Wow, I can only imagine how much work that took! But, it definitely looks very impressive and would make a great centerpiece on a dining room table. It won't be sitting on my dining room table, however. That's because Zoe has figured out how to jump on to the dining room chairs and on to the table. She only does it when we are not around because I've never seen her do it. But she leaves little paw prints all across our glass table so I know she's been up to no good. Do any of your little kids get into places they are not supposed to go?
Ed, Yep they sure do. I made some chocolate covered pretzels and biscotti one year and packaged them all up in nice fancy see through Christmas wrap and had about 6 baskets sitting on the dining room table. I went out for a few hours and came home and all the baskets were off the table. I was confused and then I looked down. I wanted to murder the babies. They or one of them, had jumped up on a chair that wasn't quite pushed up to the table and then onto the table it self. The others must have been waiting at the bottom for the booty to fall. They were all sick for days. It's a wonder they didn't die from eating all that chocolate. So now I push the dining room chairs all the way up to the table. I had to buy two huge dog crates and they stay in there while I work. They are such bad babies with sweet little faces!!
Melissa-the cookie tree was easy to make, but just took a lot of time. I can't decorate so I just threw the icing on there. I am sure everyone can do a better job decorating than I did.
Ilva-the great thing about the cookie tree is that you can eat it after it sits around even for a few days. I threw mine in the trash yesterday afternoon because we had eaten the top three sections. I don't need the extra weight! If you want to keep it for a long time, you can put perservative on it and it will keep for years.
Vickie,
I think your tree is gorgeous anyway - it makes it look like a real tree with frosting needles! Thanks for posting the royal icing. You don't need to send me your templates (looks like that took some work!), I think I can make my own. I just can't get over how cook a decoration this is! I just posted on my site about your far-too-generous of a box you sent me, my dear. Thank you, thank you, thank you! You are indeed a rare find in the world! I am going to call and thank you personally as soon as I quit coughing up a lung every 5 minutes, so that we can actually talk!
I sure hope that you feel better soon. This cold really seems to have gotten a hold on you. Shake it off girl! Christmas is acomin' and I know you want to be healthy for that lovely drive home. I was happy searching for all the goodies in the box. I have no idea what will inspire me for your birthday now!!
The cookie tree is super easy and you can have the templates. Not a big deal because I still have the book!! lol! Let me know, and I will get them in the mail ASAP.
Vickie, I thought I'd commented on this the other day! You're cookie tree is just gorgeous, and very impressive. Talk about the star of the cookie tray!
I left a message on another site, went back to check to see if they had answered and it wasn't there. I have been having a lot of problems with Blogger lately. I have no idea why but things just disappear!
Thanks about the cookie tree. It might have looked more professional but after 5 hours of mixing, cutting, baking and baking and baking, I was really happy just to throw the icing on and call it a blog. lol!
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