Sweetheart Cookies

This is going to be my last post until after tomorrow, my Winter Crop. I'm in the thick of the preparations and happy to say that everything is going fairly well. No kitchen mishaps as of yet.

Yesterday I finished the lunch dessert, Ultimate Sugar Cookies, tricked out with lots 'o sugary frosting with no nutritional value whatsoever. All empty calories. My favorite.

If you're inclined to make these sweet little sugar bombs, I put together a few tips for you. Just in case.

To save you some trouble.

First off, I like to use this little dough scraper to get the ginormous cookie shapes to the cookie sheet without too much distortion. It really helps. Also, make sure you're pushing it on with plenty of flour so there will be no sticking. Sticking stinks. It means you have to roll it all over again.

I experimented a little after the cookies came out of the oven, but were still sitting on the cookie sheet. My anal retentive gene sort of freaks out when the cookies puff out too much and lose their perfectly symmetric shapes. I've come to the conclusion that this was just dumb though. Don't waste your time. Deal with the puffiness and apply a little extra frosting to disguise the puff. I say this because this causes the edge of the cookies to crumble easily. And I don't like my cookies to crumble.

I do, however, recommend cutting any shapes you want out of the center after they bake. There are three reasons for this:

1) Trying to transfer a cookie shape with the center cut out onto the cookie sheet without distortion is dang near impossible. You could do this after transferring the shape to the cookie sheet, yes, but you still have the cold hard truth of number 2 coming at you.

2) When the cookie puffs, so will the center and you won't be able to tell what the center shape was supposed to be anyway. Trust me.

3) If you cut center shapes out after baking, you are then left with two perfect shapes to use.

During all this scientific exploration, I discovered that there were fewer chances for droppage if I transferred the cookie with cutter to my cooling rack before separating them.

On account of my mom never gave me ballet lessons, and she will disagree with me here, I am a super clutz. Just ask Peanut Head.

See how nicely it comes out with a little patience.

My super anal, unnecessary trimming of the outer edges left me with mass quantities of this nasty stuff. Cookie bits. Blech.

Whatever will I do with this by product?

Ooh look. The girlies are home from school. Time for a nutritious snack my Little Pretties. Bwah, ha, ha, ha . . .

Dang, give Drama Llama a little frosting and some sprinkles and she'll outdo herself. Stinkerbell was more into slapping the frosting on, and knocking it all back with a handful of sprinkles. Dainty, she is not.

I cannot share my cookies with you without first sharing this little guy from Pampered Chef. It's one of three from the Decorator Bottle set. I love these things so much because there is no squirtage of frosting out the opposite end when applying pressure. That, and they're super easy for kids to use.

The only negative is how to get the frosting in there in the first place.

To which I have a solution that works most excellently.

I spoon frosting into a zipper baggie, close it up, cut off a corner, and squirt it all in. It works.

Here we go, all set up and ready to make the ultimate mess.

This is a two-layer cookie, also known as Heart Attack. Get it?

I kill myself.

Another Heart Attack. I like them. The sugary kind anyway.

A swirly do. Whatever, I made it up.

Dot, dot, dot. Dork.

You know you want one.

And for my croppers, I had to have a scrapbooking specific cookie. The first year I made these I did a "Nail it Down" one for Smash because she over thinks everything and ultimately paralyzes herself in the process. It's maddening. We're always telling her "NAIL IT DOWN!"

Here's one more look before I nail you with the recipe card.

Have a great weekend!