Cookies -

 

Saturday was filled with the joy of cookies and great company. My dear friend Kristin and her beautiful family came to visit. Specifically to mess up my kitchen and not hers, but also cheer me up a bit. It's been a rough few weeks and I needed a little Obermeyer love in my life. As you can see from the photo of Mrs. Gingerbread above we were quite creative in our cookie making. And, no cookie decorating fest would be complete with out a child under the age of 5 using brightly colored icing over white-ish carpet. (no worries she didn't spill any)

 

The sugar cookie recipe turned out beautifully - with soft puffy sugary wonderfulness. The recipe can be found on All Recipes.com  http://tiny.cc/sugarcookie

 

Kristin was also kind enough to bring a selection of cookie cutters - since I didn't have any. Here is an example of one of the more ... creative cookie cutter shapes. They are candle sticks -- get your mind out of the gutter.

The icing recipe was super simple - 1 cup confectioners/powdered sugar to 2-3 Tablespoons milk whisked until smooth. It/when it dries out a bit add a dash of warm water. Color with food die (I prefer the gel kind, it is not nearly as messy as liquid.

The Gingerbread Cookies gave us a bit of a fight. I turned to my all time favorite Cooks Illustrated
http://tiny.cc/gingerbreadcc for the first time I think I'm a bit disappointed. We followed the directions to a T - but the dough wouldn't release from the parchment paper. So, we improvised and mostly just made round cookies. I was quite surprised - their recipes are normally fool proof. Next time I might floor the paper before rolling to help the dough release.

Finally, I had slaved over French Butter cookie dough on Friday, hoping to have the most adorable chocolate swirl cookies. They were the driest little cookies ever, they were NOT sweet, and overall a complete disappointment in cookie making. That said - they were traditional french butter cookies, crumbled well, and I guess weren't supposed to be sweet American cookies. So, while I was disapponted and wasted 15 dollars worth of ingeredients some French guy would have loved them. My husband, Kristin, Jeff, and I all did not. Next time I'm using the sugar cookie recipe. I'll post the recipe when I perfect it :)