snowflake cookies

To go along with the winter Tokidoki unicorn cake that I made for my daughter's 6th birthday in my last post, I also made these snowflake cookies as the favors. She's still really into Frozen right now, so she is currently loving anything with snowflakes! Fitting, for a winter birthday!

I started with my favorite sugar cookie dough (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), which I rolled out to about 1/8-inch thick, and then used a snowflake-shaped cookie cutter to cut out my shapes. Then I baked them at 350F for 10-12 minutes until golden brown.

For the royal icing (recipe also in my book!), I only needed two colors - white, and light blue! So I outlined each cookie with stiff white icing (using a disposable pastry bag fitted with a small round tip), and then filled them in with runny white icing.

After the cookies had dried for several hours (I prefer overnight), I used stiff light blue icing (tinted with Americolor sky blue) to pipe a snowflake design on each cookie (also using a small round tip). I did a pretty common snowflake design, but you can do whatever design you like!

They came out pretty nice! And they were a good size to give out as cookie favors.

I ended up wrapping each one in a cellophane bag tied with raffia, which keeps them nice and fresh for 1-2 weeks.

I think these would also be great as cupcake toppers, or even as decorations for a "Frozen" themed cake! They would even look great on place settings at a Christmas table, similar to how I used cookies on place settings in this post!

Enjoy!

winter yuki tokidoki unicorn birthday cake

For my daughter's 6th birthday this past December, I asked her what kind of cake she wanted. She told me that she wanted another unicorn cake, like the Tokidoki one that I made for her last year, except she wanted to pick a different unicorn this time. So we looked up Tokidoki unicorns, and as soon as she saw Yuki, a winter unicorn with snowflakes, she was smitten! (She's still really into Frozen, and she loved Yuki's snowflakes!)

Since we were going with the winter theme (winter bithday, winter unicorn), I decided she should have a minty chocolatey cake! So I made two 8-inch chocolate cakes (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), filled with peppermint whipped cream. (I sliced each cake layer in half horizontally, giving me four cake layers and three layers of filling).

After filling and chilling the cake, I whipped up a batch of cream cheese buttercream (recipe also in my book!), and covered the top and sides of the cake with it. Then using a piping bag fitted with a medium star tip, I piped long vertical swirls of frosting along the sides of the cake (the same technique that I used here, here, and here, inspired by a Nikole Herriott cake).

Then I was ready to pipe the unicorn. I used a toothpick to draw my outline, and then used a small round piping tip with black icing to trace over the outline.

Then I used a small star tip to fill in my unicorn! (For the snowflakes, I used a smaller round tip to pipe them over the piped stars).

To finish decorating the cake, I piped a birthday message in blue, and then I was done!

Stay tuned to see the winter cookie favors that I made, and cupcakes for her class party as well!

Happy Birthday, my sweet Melodie! We love you so much!!!

glittery shamrock cookies for st. patrick's day

Last year for my daughter's St. Patrick's Day party at school, I signed up to make cookies (of course). And since my cousin Yvonne had given me this adorable jar of green shimmer sprinkles, I just had to use them!

I started with my favorite sugar cookie dough that I always use (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), rolled it out until about 1/8" thick, and used a shamrock cookie cutter (which I believe is from a Crate & Barrel cookie cutter set that my friend Diana gave me years ago).

Then before baking the cookies, I brushed them lightly with egg whites, and added my sparkly green sprinkles. 

I had used the cookie cutter to help me out so I wouldn't get sprinkles everywhere, but in hindsight I think I shouldn't have done that because it left me with bare edges that had no sprinkles!

Then I baked them at 350F for 10-12 minutes until the edges of the cookies were golden.

I thought they came out pretty cute, and using the sprinkles was much easier than outlining and flooding each cookie with royal icing. But I still felt the edges were too bare, so I ended up piping green royal icing around the edges, just to give it a more finished look.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone!

dinosaur cookies

My cousin's son Ethan absolutely loves dinosaurs, so when he turned 3 a couple of months ago, she asked me to make dinosaur cookies for his birthday party! The party's theme colors would be blue, green, and orange, so I decided to make three different types of dino cookies in each color.

After ordering a few dino cookie cookie cutters on Amazon (this one, this one, and this set), I was all ready! I made my favorite sugar cookie dough (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), rolled it out to about 1/8 inch thick, and used my new cutters to cut out the shapes.

Here's Brontosaurus ...

and Stegasaurus ...

and of course I had to make T-Rex as well!

After baking them at 350F until golden (about 10-12 minutes), I let them cool on a rack while I made my royal icing (recipe also in my book!)

I colored my royal icing with gel-based food coloring, and then used a disposable piping bag with a small round tip to outline the dinosaurs with stiff icing. Next, I used runny icing to fill them in.

While the icing was still wet a piped little drops of a lighter shade of icing onto each dinosaur's back. This way I would have flat spots (as opposed to raised spots, in which case you would pipe the little drops after the first layer of icing had dried).

Then I let the cookies dry for several hours (or overnight).

Aren't they super duper cute?

And I just love the color combination!

 

Happy Birthday, Ethan! Hope you enjoyed your cookies!