Gourmet Cookie Bouquets Recipe Blog

Archive for the ‘Cookies’ Category

The weather outside may be dreadful, but the cookies are so delightful.  Winter is the perfect time to practice and perfect the art of baking delicious, beautiful gourmet cookies.  Your friends and family will be supportive of this endeavor, you can be sure!  Snowflake cookies are a great way to make the winter months a little more palatable or to treat yourself to something warm and soothing after a day of skiing, snowshoeing, or building snowmen.  Here are some snowflake cookie designs and decorating tips.

A good cookie needs good dough.  For snowflake cookies, the best choices are sugar or gingerbread dough.  You can use your own favorite recipes or get started with this one from Chef Paula Deen.

You'll need:

• 1 cup butter, softened  (note: some people prefer to use 4 ounces of butter and 4 ounces of shortening to create more crisp shapes and lines, especially for cookies with cut-outs).
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 3 ¼ cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt

To make:

1. Beat butter and sugar until fluffy.
2. Beat in eggs and vanilla and almond extracts.
3. In another bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt.  To this, gradually add the sugar mixture until smooth.
4. Wrap the dough in heavy-duty plastic wrap. Refrigerate for one hour.
5. In the meantime, preheat your oven to 350º and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
6. After the dough as chilled, roll the dough out on a floured surface. Aim for a thickness of ¼ inch.
7. Cut with your snowflake cookie cutters and place on cookie sheet.
8. Chill them for another 15 minutes so they do not spread and become misshapen.
9. Bake for 10 minutes or until the edges are golden.
10. Let cool for a few minutes and then transfer to a wire rack or plate to cool.

Now that you've taken care of business, you get to have fun.  The decorating is always the best part, and you can use your imagination to create customized cookies.  You can drizzle or ice your sugar or gingerbread cookies with royal icing and enjoy or you can try your hand at decorating.

Before you get started, here are some handy items to have:

• White, pale blue, and/or silver sprinkles.
• White, pale blue, and/or silver sanding sugar or metallic luster dust.
• White, pale blue, and/or silver edible pearls and other fun decorations.
• Piping bag and small tip.
• Squeeze bottle (like a condiment bottle, available at craft stores).

To decorate, you'll need royal icing.  You can find countless recipes online, so find one you like and whip up a batch.  You want the consistency to be stiff.  Place a large scoop of the icing in a decorating bag with a small tip and set aside.  This icing will be used to outline your cookie.

To the remaining icing, add water by the spoonful until the icing is the consistency of maple syrup.  This thinner icing will be used to flood, or fill, in the center of the cookies.

An easy one to start with is a standard 6-armed star.  Using your piping bag, carefully draw intersecting lines through each arm.  Now, create a snowflake look by adding V-shapes through the arms.  Add a sugar pearl or dot at the end of each and in the middle.  WhatsCookingAmerica.net has a great variety of snowflake decorated cookies for you to check out and draw inspiration from.  There is no wrong way to do it, and because no two snowflakes are the same, you can experiment with a lot of different techniques and toppings.

Both sugar and gingerbread cookies are great with cocoa, tea, or coffee; perfect for a cozy evening at home.  This is the best way to enjoy winter!

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• The Best Ovens for Cookie Baking
• Easy Christmas Cookies - 1 Dough Made 5 Ways!
• 5 Different Ways to Decorate Cut Out Cookies

You are about to discover the secret to exceptional cookies; cookies that not only taste wonderful but that look like they just came out of an upscale bakery.  It's luster dust.  Perfect for special occasions, or when you just want to show off your stellar baking skills, this wonderful sugary dust adds sparkle, shine, and elegance to your cookies.  Here are some tips for using luster dust to  decorate cookies that look too good to eat and too good to resist. It's also used to decorate cakes too, but we're going to focus on cookies!

What is luster dust?  It sounds magical, doesn't it?  It is a nontoxic, completely edible powder that adds no taste to the cookies.  This is great if you want to add sparkle, shine, and color to your baked goods without adding extra sugar.  Luster dust, which is sometimes called “pearl dust,” is available in a wide variety of colors and is quite versatile. It can be used wet or dry to create different effects, and it has a gorgeous, sophisticated metallic sheen.

Cake decorators often use luster dust to add shine and refinement to wedding cakes, and now you can add elegance and professional polish to your home-baked goods as well.  Now, how do you get started?

You can use luster dust dry or wet, depending on what type of effect you want to create.  If you are using it dry, simply use an unused paintbrush to brush the dust onto your cookies.  This adds beautiful shine and shimmer and can dress up cookies for weddings or baby shower favors, and other events.

If you are using it dry, you do not need to prep.  Just shake some luster dust into a dish and get started.

You can also use luster dust to “paint” your cookies.  This allows you to create a deeper color and to have a little more freedom in the types of designs you want to create.

First, tap a little of the luster dust into a dish and add a few drops of vodka.  Yes, vodka.  Luster dust does not bond with water, so you'll need an alcohol-based solution.

Now you have your paint and you can let your inner artist out and try swirls, names, pictures, borders, flowers, and more. You are only limited by your imagination. Luster dust is a great addition to any pantry.  If you have never used it before, set aside some time and some sugar cookies and give it a try!

See how it's done in this video:

Related Articles:

• 5 Different Ways to Decorate Cut Out Cookies
• Decorated Dress Cookies

Since Girl Scout cookies can only be sold by registered Girl Scouts, chances are you’re going to want to get out there in the public and promote your troop’s offerings. If you have a scout in the family and want to know how to help her set up a booth in town, here are some suggestions.

Adults are allowed to facilitate but not sell the cookies. There must be a scout present at all times to do the selling. So plan on having several scouts to volunteer at different times of the day so girls won’t get tired.

Ask a local food store, strip mall owner, restaurant or other local store if your troop can set up a card table outside their business. The owner will usually be happy to agree unless zoning laws forbid selling outside their store. If that’s the case, the store owner will often allow you to set up inside the store. You can also plan to set up at local craft fairs or outdoor flea markets.

Bring a small card table. A square one is best. Don’t overdo it with a long table that takes up too much space. You are a guest, after all and most places will not charge you to be there. So be respectful of the space they have given you.

Bring enough inventory to last you several hours. You don’t want to have willing buyers and not enough cookies. Bring more than you think you need. Since all the money is going to your troop, there should be no problem getting enough boxes of gourmet cookies to sell.

Any girl who plans to man the cookie table should be given credit for the cookies sales she initiates. So you’ll want to help the girls keep a list of how much they have each sold. Girls receive prizes and badges for selling the cookies, so you want to ensure proper credit is given.

Bring enough change so that you don’t have to go rummaging around in your purse at the last minute. You’ll need lots of ones and quarters. Go to the bank the day before the sale or make change in the morning at the store where you’ll be setting up. Keep the change in a box with a lock. And put a slip of paper inside with how much money you started with in change so you can deduct it from the sales at the end.

Have each girl wear her uniform to do the selling. Since it will be February or March, you’ll want to ensure they are warm enough, too. You might have a canteen of hot cocoa ready for them and ask all moms to dress their girls with coats, gloves, and hats.

The cookies practically sell themselves once you are set up. People love Girl Scout cookies and the cuter the girls and the more willing they are to ask passing shoppers if they’d like to buy a box of cookies, the more you’ll all sell. Just be sure that an adult stays at the table to supervise and never let a Girl Scout approach strangers at their cars or follow them to their cars to deliver the cookies to them. Safety is of the utmost importance.

Keep track of how many cookies your troop sells each day. You may want to do both days of a weekend at one location, or do one location on a Saturday and move to another location for a Sunday sale.

Ask moms and scouts to sign up ahead of time for when they can man the table. One person usually heads up the process and calls or emails moms the night before to remind them of the times they signed up for.

Selling Girl Scout cookies can help build a young lady’s self-esteem and show her how the marketing process works. It’s great real world learning and she’ll use the skills and confidence she gains all her life.

Related Articles:

• Girl Scout Cookie Fun Facts
• Varieties of Girl Scout Cookies

Have you ever thought that you could turn your baking talents into cash for a good cause? Hosting a bake sale is not what it used to be. Gone are the days when you made a few dollars and that was the end of it. Now you can join an organization called the Share our Strength’s Great American Bake Sale and raise money to help end childhood hunger.

This new concept has taken off recently as grass roots organizations like local PTOs have started to contribute to it. All you have to do is hold a bake sale and donate your proceeds to the Great American Bake Sale. The non-profit organization then uses your donation to help fight the hunger that runs rampant in children all across the country. Their goal is to end childhood hunger by the year 2015.

Unlike a traditional bake sale, you’ll have the backing of the organization behind you. Once you register your bake sale online at the organization’s site, www.strength.org, you can order promotional flyers and materials to help publicize your sale. People are more likely to come out in support of the organization since they see where the money is going. Read through the Great American Bake Sale’s site to find more opportunities to get involved and help fight hunger.

You can certainly host your own holiday bake sale and donate to a local charity of your choice. This is another simple way to make a difference. Many organizations like the PTO and scout troops will coordinate an effort to raise funds through baked good sales. If you combine a bake sale with another event, the proceeds will likely skyrocket. Being part of a flea market or town wide tag sale can give you more visibility and more traffic—which equals more buyers.

Usually, each family brings baked goods they make at home to donate to the sale. But it can also be fun to host a baking party at someone’s house so you can all bake together as a group. Or you can see if you can use a church or other public place’s kitchen to bake in bulk. If it’s for charity, they will usually let you.

Bake sales are still a fantastic way for young people to help a good cause. They can bake, make the table displays, run the cash register, make change and watch their delicious gourmet desserts being enjoyed by eager customers. It’s a good lesson in life and in money management.

Charities usually run dry of contributions around the winter months. So, any extra you can provide through your gift of cash raised from your bake sale will be a welcomed sight. See if you can drop off the donation along with some of the children who baked the holiday cookies. It will do a world of good for them to see where the money went and how it will be used. They will be more likely to have a charitable spirit next time an event is being planned.

Baked goods are always in demand and are easy to create. Experiment with some unique recipes and you can sell your creations for a fair price. Of course, the old favorites of chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies will still be on everyone’s favorite lists.

Related Articles:

• Teaching Your Kids Basic Money Skills
• Donate Money to the Hope in Love and War
• 5 Different Ways to Decorate Cut Out Cookies

It gets harder and harder to find just the right holiday gift as we are increasingly surrounded by electronic gadgets and more high-tech toys.  What do you get for people to show them your appreciation without spending a fortune?  How do you get people who seem to have everything a gift they will like?  It’s easy!  Cookies.  It's the perfect gift for virtually any occasion and any recipient.  Sure, there are people who don’t like cookies – but do you know any personally?  We didn’t think so!  Even if the recipient isn’t overly fond of sweets, he/she can take them home and watch them get devoured by friends and family.  For any occasion that leaves you at a loss, turn to Christmas cookie boxes.

When giving cookies, presentation is everything.  Well, the taste of the cookies is everything, but the box is important, too.  A careful presentation can turn this homemade treat into an elegant gift. One very easy way to make a cookie box is to find plain white gift boxes in the size that you want.  Cut strips of patterned paper (scrapbook paper is great for this, but wrapping paper can do in a pinch) and glue a strip around the sides of the box.  Cut a circle from card stock and glue it on the strip at the front of the box.

Fill your box with delicious cookies and close the lid.  Tie a ribbon around the box and tie it at the top.  Next, cut circles from cardboard or cardstock and layer them. This will be the tag, and you can draw on the recipient’s first initial or name.  Glue the tag over the ribbon and the cardstock circle on the front of the box for a personalized seal.

You can make your own cookie boxes, as well.  Associated Content has a helpful instructional video on making an origami box from plain computer paper.  This makes a great box for a small amount of cookies or perhaps some homemade candies.  If you either want to make a bigger box or aren’t dexterous enough to do origami, you can print cookie box templates online.  There are great ones at DontEatthePaste.com.

You can either print one on a paper or cardstock of your choice or you can print it and then trace it onto the paper of your choice.  In either case, all you have to do is cut and fold along the lines.  In no time, you will have a beautiful homemade box for your cookies.

Before you put the cookies into the box, it is a good idea to line it with wax or parchment paper.  Tissue paper is also a great choice, especially if you want to add color to your presentation.  Arrange the cookies carefully, close the box, and secure with a ribbon or sticker.

Here are some other tips for making your gift look and taste perfect:

• Do not store soft and crisp cookies in the same container, because the crisp ones won’t stay crisp.
• Make sure they are stored in a tightly covered container with a sealable or snug lid.
• If your soft cookies have begun to dry out, cut an apple in half and place it skin side down on top of the cookies.  Remove the fruit after a day or so.
• If you need to store cookies longer, put them in freezer-safe containers or bags.  Before serving or giving, make sure they are completely thawed in their original freezer packaging.
• If you are storing dough, shape it into rolls until you are going to use it.
• If you are shipping cookies, brownies, bar cookies, and drop cookies, like chocolate chip, are the least likely to become damaged.  Sugar cookies very often crack or break.  Avoid shipping cookies that have moist or creamy fillings or frostings because they can get sticky and misshaped.
• Add the recipe you used on a decorative tag for a nice homey touch.

Give the gift of homemade cookies; it is sure to be appreciated.  This is one gift you can be sure will be used and loved.

Related Articles:

• The Best Ovens for Cookie Baking
• Christmas Reindeer Cookies
• Easy Christmas Cookies - 1 Dough Made 5 Ways!