Smiley cookies

Photo enlarged!

  Cuteness Overload!  Where ever you see smileys it sure makes one smile. Aren't these the cutest little thing ever, created to bring smiles to the person receiving it? Be it with a card, at the end of a note or in an email. I just love smileys!!!

 

I figured these baby bites were the perfect treats for 7 year old cubs for their end of the year party at the scouts. Today we thank our Scout master for preparing  restless little boys into becoming responsible  citizens of tomorrow. I plan on sending these home as a favor with all that cubs that attend today as we ended up with way more that we should have in the house ;)

 

 Woot woot to my  little scout who is graduating from a tiger cub to wolf! 

 

I made a batch of  basic sugar cookie recipe  and the regular Wilton royal icing to make these.

• 2 sticks cold butter, cut up
• 1cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract/ paste
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3 cups all purpose flour

 

 

In a mixer bowl, cream together butter cubes and sugar

 

This time I remembered to use vanilla paste (TJ Maxx, 6$...what a steal!) before mixing in the dough. Beat all ingredients till the mixture is creamy. Scrape bowl all the way to the bottom (crucial).

 

 

Add in egg and beat just until mixed.

 

 

Add in flour and baking powder and mix. At this point, be kind to your mixer and knead the rest with hand. (Using mixer to get a completely smooth dough will result in tough textured cookies and we don't want that!) The dough comes together sooner than you can sing your ABC's :)

 

 

See! Make two flat discs out of it.

 

 

Refrigerate. I don't track time, but usually while the discs are chilling, I prepare parchment lined pans, set aside a couple plates for placing cookies in freezer and am clearing up my area for rolling out the dough. What I mean to say is that timing does not matter here.

 

 Oh, and I have the dough disks in a bowl instead of saran wrap because I want to be able to switch the discs in between work. Keep following the  pics, you will see!

 

Roll out the dough between two parchment sheets or in my case Silpat at the bottom and parchment on top. Silpat at the bottom helps by staying stuck to the counter and does not slide like the parchment sheet does. Always!

 

 My cookie cutter was the 'inside' of linzer torte. Cut away!

 

 here's my linzer torte cookie cutter to show you what I mean!

 

 

Remove all the cookies and place on a plate( you can freeze directly on the cookie sheet too but my freezer does not allow my 9x 13 sheet to sit flat). So I always have one extra step....not a biggie!

 

 Freeze for 5 to 10 minutes. In the mean time, ball up the scraps and switch with the disc from the refrigerator. This is where using the bowl instead of cling/saran wrap helps. I mean do you seriously have the time to mess with saran at this point?

 

BTW, always always freeze before baking . That is if you hate mis-shapened cookie ( seriously, it will spread like nobody's business). Go ahead and bake!

 

 

Cool completely.  I let it sit 30 minutes.

 

 

Outline with thick royal icing.

 

 

 Flood with thin consistency.

 

 

Pipe in the details with 1m tip. Enjoy!