Homemade Frosted Animal Cookies

Our dad loves frosted animal cookies. The other day I came across a recipe to make jumbo frosted animal cookies. And then my dad told me he had a business trip in a nearby city and asked to visit for the weekend (of course!). I was planning dinners for the weekend and wanted a treat--that's when I realized the stars aligned for me to make homemade frosted animal cookies for my dad.

Homemade Frosted Animal Cookies
(Recipe adapted from Munchkin Munchies)


Ingredients:
2.5 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
3/4 cup (1.5 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
16 oz. buttercream icing (storebought)
red food coloring
rainbow sprinkles

Directions:

Combine flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg.

Using an electric mixer, beat the butter on high speed for 2 minutes. Reduce the speed to medium, and slowly add the sugar. Beat for 2 minutes, stopping periodically to scrape the sides of the bowl. Add egg and vanilla and beat for 1 minute, stopping the mixer once to scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Stop the mixer and add half of the flour mixture. Beat on low speed until most of the flour has been absorbed. Add the remaining flour and beat until all of the flour has been absorbed and the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl, 2 to 3 minutes.

Turn the dough out onto a work surface. Shape dough into a disk shape and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours or up to 2 days.

Once your dough is chilled, preheat an oven to 350°F.

Let the dough stand at room temperature for 5 minutes.  Roll out the dough to almost 1/2-inch thick on a lightly floured surface. Cut out shapes with cookie cutters and move them to baking sheets.

Bake the cookies until very light golden brown, about 15 minutes. Transfer the baking sheets to wire racks to cool for about 5 minutes. Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool completely.



Frosting:
Place the buttercream icing in a microwave-safe bowl from 15-30 seconds (until pourable). If it becomes too thin, add some powdered sugar. Divide icing into 2 bowls. Tint half of it pink and keep the other half white. With the cookies on a wire rack, place the rack over a baking sheet (or over wax paper).  Use a spoon to cover each cookie with the icing. Sprinkle with the rainbow sprinkles.



Makes about 16 cookies.

Banana Pudding Cookies

I know I've mentioned her before but my awesome friend Megan is an amazing cook. She found this recipe and tweaked it to perfection! We made these recently and wow they are amazing!

Megan's Banana Pudding Cookies 1 c. butter--softened to room temperature (STAY AWAY from the microwave!) 3/4 c. sugar 3/4 c. brown sugar 2 large eggs 1 tsp. vanilla 1 tsp. salt 1 tsp. baking soda 3 c. flour 1 (3.4 oz) package of dry Instant Banana Pudding mix 1 1/2 c. white chocolate chips 5 graham crackers--broken into small pieces, NOT crushed OR use Vanilla wafers broken into pieces Cream together butter and sugars using the paddle attachment on your mixer. Add eggs and vanilla, and beat until fluffy again. In a separate bowl, combine salt, soda, flour, and pudding mix, then add slowly to wet ingredients (do not over mix). I toss the chocolate chips and graham crackers in just after I finish dumping the flour mix in, then, viola, cookie dough. I use my cookie scoop to put cookies on a baking sheet. Bake at 375 for 8-9 minutes, until they are barely turning golden brown around the edges. DO NOT over bake. Printable recipe

Go try them out!

Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies--gluten-free, dairy-free & egg-free!

My poor husband has been off gluten, dairy and eggs for six weeks as we try to pin down a mild mystery allergy. This means he doesn't get to enjoy things like bread or butter or ice cream. We've found a few alternatives--dairy-free butter flavoring for popcorn, and coconut milk ice cream (no bread yet, though--everything gluten-free seems to have eggs or dairy :\ ). But one bright spot?

These babies.

I came across this recipe on Pinterest the week my husband was starting his diet. The recipe was already gluten- and dairy-free, so all I had to do was find a replacement for that one pesky egg. The comments on the original post supplied a suggestion: a flax egg.

I had flax seeds and flax seed meal on hand from other baking experiments, and because I make a moisturizing hair gel from flax seeds in the winter. I searched out how to make a flax egg, but as usual, I did my own Wayward thing in the end.  

Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies!
Gluten free, dairy free & egg free

• 1 Tbsp flax seed meal (you can grind flax seed in a clean coffee grinder, or we use Bob's Red Mill Organic)
• 3 Tbsp water
• 1 c peanut butter (I've only tried this with commercial smooth peanut butter)
• 1 c packed brown sugar
• 1/2 Tbsp vanilla extract (you can use twice as much, really, but if you're planning to eat the dough raw, the alcohol leaves a stronger flavor. You might omit it entirely.)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 c dairy-free chocolate chips*

1. Make the flax egg: pour flax seed meal into a small bowl. Add water. Stir until combined.
Now you have three options:

• My flax seed meal package says to let it sit two minutes, but that's probably not going to give you an egg-like result
• I found these instructions telling you to refrigerate the egg for 15 minutes. That didn't give me an egg-like result, and then I read that it could take up to an hour. (The dough was supposed to chill 2 more hours and we wanted cookies NOW.)
• At this point, I fell back on my flax seed gel experience (and a comment on the above post) and made a new flax egg and microwaved it. I cooked it for 30 seconds, stirred well, and cooked for 30 more seconds. Stir it well to cool it off before adding to the recipe. (Room temperature or slightly warmer is okay.)

 Your goal is to make a gel with the flax seed meal about the consistency of egg whites. There will be little bits of flax seed in it, and they're about as noticeable as the bits of wheat in a graham cracker: not very.

2. Once your flax egg is ready, in a medium mixing bowl, combine the peanut butter, brown sugar, flax egg, and vanilla. The original recipe says to mix these until thoroughly combined, five minutes. I've made them three times and it hasn't taken nearly that long (and there's a caution to overmixing: the oils might separate out. Yuck.). If you're using a mixer and you're cooking for someone with an actual gluten allergy, please use caution. You never know if flour (gluten) from previous recipes could be in the mechanism and end up in your dough. I got a new hand mixer for Christmas, and it's been our dedicated gluten-free mixer.

3. Add baking soda and mix.

4. Add chocolate chips and mix until just combined.

5. The original recipe mandates that you must chill the cookies for two hours before shaping into balls and baking, or they will spread. I don't know if it's the flax egg or the altitude, but compare our test cookies:

Chilled (left) and unchilled (right) dough

If anything, they could use a little more spreading!

However, if you want to chill your dough and don't want to wait 2 hours, this is the recipe I tested the chilling dough fast trick on.

Using a silicone baking mat (or parchment paper) on a cookie sheet, bake at 350 F for 8-10 minutes, or until just barely set. Cool on the pan until set. Enjoy!

*We've used two kinds of chocolate chips for these. Ghirardelli Chocolate Semi-Sweet Baking Chips are processed on dairy-shared equipment (but given the mildness of my husband's allergy, and the fact that he works in manufacturing and knows what kind of procedures they must do to clean the equipment, he decided he was okay with that). The other was Enjoy Life Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips, which are free of gluten, dairy, soy, eggs, and half a dozen other things you shouldn't find in chocolate chips anyway. Store brand semi-sweet chips are sometimes dairy-free (or shared equipment) as well.

Kitchen tip: chill dough fast

Yesterday, I was making cookies that required chilling after shaping. I really didn't want to wait two hours to bake them (why do recipes tell you to preheat the oven, only to not bake for hours?).

Luckily, I remembered a quick tip to chill dough. After shaping into balls, seal them in a plastic zipper baggie, and put the baggie in an ice bath. Be careful to keep the zip top above the water level!

Water is a faster medium for temperature exchange than air, so the dough chills faster this way. This trick also works for chilling drinks and more.

10-15 minutes should be enough for dough balls. 20 minutes was almost too long for mine--they barely spread at all!

What's your favorite kitchen tip?

Wayward Pin Fail

Ever seen something on Pinterest you think you can do? Yeah, yesterday we decided we would make something we found. We (I'm at Jordan's house and decided to make fun things with her kids) decided to make unicorn cookies/ rainbow swirl cookies.

Well...they did not turn out as expected. I had Jordan's 3 older kids help make the dough, stir in the food coloring and roll out "snakes" of each color. I only figured out how to really swirl the colors after I had done most of the batch. And the colors didn't turn out well. Also, MORE FLOUR! It might be that whole higher elevation thing but wow...these were flat flat flat. At least they tasted good!

These were definitely WAYWARD!

Election Day Cookies

Happy Election Day everyone! Please go out and vote! Here are some yummy cookies to entice you to do it:

Cookies from a mix. Frosting from the Better Homes and Gardens.  (Any tips on getting RED and BLUE frosting with food coloring?)

Short and sweet from me today so don't waste any time---VOTE!

3 Ingredient Pumpkin Cookies

Fall baking means one thing to me: PUMPKIN! I've been meaning to make some pumpkin cookies and friends coming over for lunch in between General Conference Sessions was a great excuse. I found the idea of making pumpkin cookies with only 3 ingredients all over and I knew I had to make them myself.

3 Ingredient Pumpkin Cookies

Ingredients:

1 15 oz can of pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)

1 cake mix (I'd recommend Spice Cake)

1 bag (2 cups) of chocolate chips (I'd recommend dark chocolate chips)

Optional: Pumpkin pie spice. Really you only need this if you use a regular cake mix, rather than spice cake.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350. Mix together pumpkin and cake mix using a mixer.

 

2. Stir in chocolate chips

3. Glob 2 tablespoon sized cookies on a greased cookie sheet.

4. Cook at 350 for 12-15 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

5. ENJOY!

What excuse can you find to make these babies?

Blueberry White Chocolate Chip Cookies

On Memorial Day, some friends threw a small barbeque. We enjoyed a lovely spread, including grilled kabobs, fresh veggies with hummus and watermelon. For dessert someone brought blueberry white chocolate chip cookies. They were store bought cookies so I wasn't all that excited. Call me a cookie snob but we all know that homemade cookies > store bought. Except I tried one and I was AMAZED! So now I want to make the store bought cookies into homemade cookies, but I put it on the back burner. Who has time to experiment? But my friend and fellow blogger, Ashton at Something Swanky, inspired me. She is so talented at finding inspiration and making a recipe her own. So I decided to try it! I found a recipe on We Are Not Martha for Blueberry, Lemon and White Chocolate Chunk Cookies. I adapted it to fit what I was looking for.

1.5 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 cup  brown sugar
1 egg, room temperature
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup nice white chocolate chips (they make all the difference!)
1/2 cup dried blueberries
1 cup fresh blueberries, washed and dried

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, cream butter and brown sugar together with a hand or stand mixer. Then, add the egg and vanilla. Mix the flour, salt, and baking powder in a separate bowl. Slowly add small amounts of the dry mixture and mix with electric mixer until fully incorporated with the wet mixture. Next, add in the white chocolate chips and dried blueberry in nice and gently. Then gently mix the fresh blueberries. Scoop the cookies in 1 inch balls and put them on a  greased cookie sheet about 1-2 inches apart. Cook for about 13-15 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Allow to cool on racks. 

ENJOY!

Amazing Rolo Stuffed Chocolate Cookies

We went to a cookie party a couple weekends ago and we wanted to bring our best. I saw Rolo stuffed cookies on Pinterest that I wanted to try out and they were amazing!! The judges (everyone's kids) didn't pick us (again!) but let's just say I went home with an empty plate so they were a hit!

Jamie at Jamie Cooks It Up, gives great directions here. I have some pointers to add.

1. My dough was really sticky after mixing it up I would stick it in the refrigerator for a few minutes.
2. I used half as much white chocolate as she suggests to drizzle.
3. These cookies are best warm but they are also really good the next day if you heat them up for 12 seconds in the microwave so the caramel is gooey again :)

Enjoy!

Frosting Christmas Cookies and Drizzle Frosting Recipe

One of my favorite Christmas traditions as a child, and even now, is decorating Christmas cookies. It is the culmination of the season for our family, since we make and decorate them on Christmas Eve.

My mom makes the dough and the kids roll it out and cut the cookies. We make at least four cookie sheets worth!

I have to share a secret with you: We make UGLY cookies. And we love them. This is why it's so fun and why we're still decorating them even as adults.

 We use a drizzled kind of frosting, so the cookies are tasty but....not perfect in appearance. I think we've made some really cool cookies though.

Harry Potter cookies to go along with our obsession. These are Jasmine's. She made that golden snitch cookie that says "I open at the close" cool, huh? Don't forget about Harry, Ron, Hermione and Voldemorte

She made the Weasley family too!

Now for some not so pretty cookies:

Michael Jackson, RIP!

Jaime by Jaime (I added an elephant for some class)

My favorite on here is by my brother-in-law, he did the NC State cookie. I was impressed!

Frosting Recipe:

Ingredients:

1 lb Powdered Sugar
6 Tablespoons of Whole milk
6 Tablespoons of light corn syrup
1 Teaspoon of almond or vanilla extract

Directions:
With a whisk, combine sugar and milk until smooth. Then mix in corn syrup and extract. We put about 3/4 cup into a mug and then add food coloring and stir. We use spoons to drizzle the frosting on and tooth picks for accents.

Do you make Christmas cookies every year? Ever made ugly ones?