Cookies for all!

I was inspired to post because I came across an awesome looking pin, and through some digging I found out the pin was traceable back to an on-line newsletter from DVO.com, a company that sells a recipe organizational software... Wow, what a world we live in! I still prefer my hand written, flour covered papers.

Here’s the article:
http://www.dvo.com/newsletter/monthly/2010/november/tabletalk4.html

Note: I made mine without the benefit of this, because I rushed in full speed ahead, without researching where the image had actually come from.

TIME:
Making dough - 10 minutes
Chilling dough - 3-4 hours
Cutting out and baking and cooling cookies - 20 minutes

TOTAL TIME:
4 ½ hours

INGREDIENTS:

For the sugar cookies, I used the ‘rolled cookies’ recipe from my old standby Joy of Cooking

Cream:
½ cup butter
½ cup white or brown sugar (I used white, but I think they would have been better with Brown)
Add:
2 eggs
1 tbs vanilla (or any flavour extract of your choice)
1 ¾ cup of flour
1 tsp salt

Food Dye, I used liquid food dyes, and the colours came out distinctly pastel. Next time I think I will use gel or paste food colours to get those rich autumn tones.

EQUIPMENT:
Kitchen Aide Mixer
Separate bowls for mixing in the colours
Resilient arms

INSTRUCTIONS:

Make the cookie dough, just barely combining in the flour, as the dough will be get very mixed up when adding the food dye.

Separate the dough into four (Or however many colours you want, but I think 4 should be the max, otherwise it starts to look messy) parts.

Add the food dye to each part, the dough will get VERY soft and warm during this, and chilling the dough is a necessity.

Chill the dough in the fridge for 3-4 hours

Remove dough from the fridge, and let it soften a bit on the counter.

Preheat oven the 350C.

Do not roll out all the cough at once. Take a small (1-2 tbsp) portion of each colour of dough for each cookie. Roll it out flat, making sure the colours are all joined but not too mixed together. Use a lot of flour to make sure the dough doesn't stick to the counter, so you can just pick it up and roll it again, instead of having to scrape it off like I did (I ended up mixing the colours more and more together into a dull beige).
For each of the few cookies, roll out more of each colour.

I rolled my dough out to about 1/32 cm thickness.

Cut out whatever shape you like. I used little bears, because I didn’t have a leaf cookie cutter, but I think a leaf one would have been the best.

Place the cookies onto a pre greased cookie sheets.

Bake for 8-10 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool on the cookies sheets.

REACTION:
I like them!

They would have been better if I had researched the pin instead of just guessing.
They would have been better with gel dye.
They would have been better if I had rolled out the dough in parts instead of all at once, resulting in a beige gray-ish mess by the end.

But at the end of the day, they were still seasonally themed sugar cookies, and they look really adorable! I am going to pull this little trick out for easter with my chick shaped cookie cutter, and some real pastel colours!


VERDICT: Pin-Win, but I think only for the recipe, not so much my execution of the colour sections.I’m eating some as I write this post. They are a seasonally themed food item, and now that I’ve worked out the kinks, my relatives can look forward to many more sugar cookies, all the colours of the rainbow (and maybe even some rainbow ones)!


          designing a life more delicious
                    Anna Felicity