Christmas Cookies

Christmas Cookies 2013

I love Christmas cookies - I love baking them, decorating them and eating them.  I have always wanted to try the fancier icing that I see Martha do every year with ease.  This was the year!  I scoured Pinterest for the best tips, tricks, recipes and tools needed.  I shopped.  I organized.  I baked.  If successful - these would be added to teacher gifts bags!

The first step was baking - classic Alton Brown recipe with one extra egg yolk and 1T extra butter (just for good measure!)  We baked to the "Sing-Off" on NBC - it's hard not to be happy when you're baking Christmas cookies, so to add great music...I was the happiest dancing baker!  The new snowflake ornament proved to be a bit of a challenge - had to work the dough in smaller batches to keep it cold enough to get the shapes from the counter in the cutter to the parchment-line baking sheets.

I never remember to write down exactly how many minutes of baking was most successful, so I have to test it out every year.  But after a couple of trials, I decided on 8 minutes IF I cooled the sheet pan by waving it up and down like a big metal fan between batches.

We got 40 cookies out of the first batch - perfect!

Then it was time to make the icing - apparently you need 2 different consistencies of the icing to pull off the seemingly effortless Martha Stewart decorations.  AND I need these small squeeze bottles for some and the zip-lock-with-the-corner-cut-off for the others.  Luckily, Peyton and I agreed we would only tackle 2 shapes for teachers.  We will do 5 shapes for Santa and family.  2 shapes = 4 icing colors - blue, white, green and red.  We can do this!

I actually had to "gear up" to get started even after everything was made...and I was on a time limit.  But I was nervous that I was in over my head.    So after a few deep breaths...I began...

 The first cookie...did I really start with the snowflakes?  YIKES!

 20 cookies outlined and beginning to "flood" with icing in a squeeze bottle

 I have to admit - this was FUN! and easy too.  Peyton was a rock star at filling in the icing.

 20 tree cookies - iced and ready to "set up" in the fridge for 30 minutes before we can add the final touches...crap!  no room in the fridge, I guess covering them and sitting on top of the washing machine in our very cold laundry room will have to do!

Lookie what we accomplished.  

These are the prettiest cookies I have ever made and they were delish!  

"Kitchen Meets Girl" is the blog where I found the icing recipe and the best tips for decorating.