On Sweetness

I have three nieces, with a nephew expected around Thanksgiving. I love being an auntie, even if sadly with two of the three it is via long distance. E is my only local niece, the daughter of friends who have become part of our chosen family. I held her when she was just hours old, on our wedding day. The minister who married us, and who knew of our fertility struggles, saw the fact that she decided to arrive on that particular day as a good omen for us. That theory has yet to prove true....so anytime universe. Really. I'm ready.

So, like my first wedding anniversary, E's birthday is coming up in a week. Today was her party, and since her mother and I share an affinity for owls I decided to make owl sugar cookies. This blog needs a little levity- so I decided to take pictures of the process and share them.

I'm no slouch in the kitchen, I've worked in foodservice on & off since I was 15 and cooked professionally for about 5 years. I much prefer cooking over baking, so this was actually my first foray into decorating sugar cookies. When people compliment me on my cooking, or lament their own lack of finesse in the kitchen- I tell them truthfully that it has very little to do with innate talent and a whole lot to do with researching, planning and remaining level headed when your plan goes awry because it frequently will- especially if you are trying something new! Allrecipes.com is your friend. If 5,000 people have rated a recipe as excellent, chances are it's going to work. There's no need to waste time and money on trying to reinvent the wheel! Above are my weapons of choice for this particular project. High quality gel food coloring, squeeze bottles with a variety of tips on them and a copper cookie cutter.

A bunch of the reviewers of the recipe I'd chosen cautioned against making sugar cookies in hot, humid weather. There's a reason sugar cookies are popular at Christmas & Valentine's Day! I did what I could to combat the sticky factor, including using wax paper as my rolling surface and chilling the dough for several hours before I began to manipulate it. After several frustrating attempts at transferring the dough cut-outs onto the baking sheets I finally accepted that my best plan of attack would be to cut out the wax paper underneath each one and transfer them that way. This wound up being great for the whole process; cooling, decorating and bagging. I battled against the elements and won, this round anyway- and left the cookies to cool for 8 hours.

Once the cookies were completely cool (and I'd completed a last minute nanny job) we began to outline the cookies with brown icing in a #1 tip.. After allowing the outlines to cool for a short while my husband flooded each one with slightly thinner icing in a thicker tip while I attached the white fondant eyes. So far, so good.

I attempted to do the beaks and feet before going to bed, and that was a mistake. The brown of the bodies wasn't hard enough and they ran. Bummer! My vision of professional-looking cookies were dashed, and slightly frustrated I went to bed- setting my alarm for four hours later. I was able to salvage some of the beaks, and after doing some of the bellies had a flash of inspiration and decided to make an E instead in honor of the birthday girl. Live and learn!

I let the top detail layers harden for another four hours before carefully bagging each one for transport to the party. In hindsight it's probably inappropriate to pray that cookies don't break, so sorry about that universe...if you are in fact listening! The cookies were a hit, and overall I was happy with how they came out. Next time I may use different tools for the detail work, namely a paintbrush to help keep the lines smaller and more controlled.


Until next time,

Grace