Sasha's Kitchen: Anti-Sweet Heart Cookies

I happen to love eating Necco candy hearts around Valentine's Day. I have been eating them each year since I was a kid and its funny how they change over the years, sometimes incorporating new technology. This year, I saw one that said "tweet me." Anyhow, apologies for not doing this in time for Valentine's Day, but as a bit of a spoof on these sweet heart candies, I decided to do some "bitter heart" cookies with funny sayings like "Bite me," "Unfriend," "One Night Stand," "You Smell," "Go Away," and "Just Lust." Pretty silly, I know, but its a sarcastic take on a hallmark holiday. Sometimes you just need to laugh a bit and these will certainly accomplish that.

Did I also mention that they taste delicious? Perfect butter cookies with royal icing!

Sasha's "Bitter Heart" Cookies
4 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 sticks unsalted butter
2 cups sugar
Bag of royal icing mix from New York Cake
gel food coloring

Beat the butter and sugar until smooth in your stand mixer. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Then add the dry ingredients and beat until it forms a smooth dough. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about an hour. Roll out the dough and cut into heart shapes using a heart shape cookie cutter.


Bake the cookies at 350 for 15 minutes, one sheet at a time. Allow to cool.

Mix the royal icing mix according to the package instructions (with water). Divide into three portions and dye with a drop or two of gel based food coloring in pink, purple or orange. You could also use other colors that those Necco hearts come in, of course like yellow or green!

Coat the cookies with the royal icing doing your best to spread the icing evenly. I used a small spatula to do this.  Allow the frosting to harden for about four hours, or overnight. Then, using a black food marker (another awesome thing from NY Cake), write all your surly, sarcastic or inner-high school bitchy sayings on the cookies. Enjoy - they taste great even without the sarcasm!

Sasha's Kitchen: Anti-Sweet Heart Cookies

Sasha's Kitchen: S-C-R-A-B-B-L-E Tile Cookies

I've long been a fan of the game Scrabble, and have played it to such a level that my family and friends often accuse my husband and I of making up words (all of which can always be found in the dictionary, I might add). I've even played versions of Scrabble (like Lexulous) on Facebook.  So, as a bit of a spoof, I decided to make royal icing cookies that looked like scrabble tiles, and taste like, well - cookies.  Part of the fun here was thinking of the words to use for the cookies.

Creating scrabble tile cookies, which are perfect for your next game night or scrabble party,  is actually quite simple.  I used the same cookie dough recipe that I used when I made purse and shoe cookies a few months ago (a project which I plan to repeat, now that my cookie-decorating skills have improved).  This is nothing fancy, just an ordinary butter cookie recipe.

Scrabble Tile Cookie Recipe


4 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 sticks unsalted butter
2 cups sugar

Beat the butter and sugar.  Add the eggs and vanilla.  Then mix in the dry ingredients.  To make a good dough, you should do this using an artisan mixer.  You next need to chill the dough for a couple of hours before rolling out the dough.  I always used to dismiss this step, since I can be a bit lacking on the patience side.  On a prior baking adventure, I learned the hard way that this is a good step to avoid having your dough stick to the counter top when you roll it out.  You can also add some loose flour when you roll out the dough.

To make scrabble tile cookies, the process is as simple as cutting with a three-inch square shaped cookie cutter, which I bought at N.Y. Cake (my favorite baking supply store on the planet).  To frost the cookies, I used royal icing, which I was able to purchase in bag form (and just added water and a bit of food coloring).  I'm all about the do-it-from-scratch type of coking with most things, but purchasing the royal icing mix in this case just makes too much sense.

Bake the cookies on a baking sheet sprayed with PAM for about 15 to 20 minutes at 350 F,  They should come out just before the start browning.  If you wait until they are lightly browned, that is too late, as the bottoms will be slightly burnt by this point, which will impact the taste.

I frosted all of the cookies brown in various shades (I experimented with two shades of brown as you can see from the photos) using a spatula, trying to frost the royal icing as even as possible. Then, I let the icing dry for about an hour, and used a food coloring marker from my new gourmet writers set to draw the letters and point values on the tiles.

Scrabble challenge anyone?  I'd like to remind you that the word "Kitchen" is a Bingo, so that will add 50 points to my score.

Sasha's Kitchen: S-C-R-A-B-B-L-E Tile Cookies

Sasha's Kitchen: Royal Iced Purse & Shoe Sugar Cookies

This project began when I discovered all of the beautiful and colorful cookies that could be made at home simply with royal icing.  I was planning on starting with a simple project like snowmen for the holidays.  However, I discovered the store New York Cake, where you can purchase just about anything for baking projects (including royal icing, an array of professional food colorings, hundreds of cookie cutters, fondant and gold powder to name a few), all at extremely reasonable prices.  When exploring the website, I noticed that they sold cookie cutters in the shapes of purses and shoes, and thus an idea was born.  I just realized that they also sell purse shaped cake pans for making purse cakes with fondant, which I plan on doing in a future project.

For this project I purchased the following: a couple of one pound bags of royal icing mix (basically confectioners sugar and meringue powder), the cookie cutters mentioned above, and a set of 12 professional food colorings.  This makes a perfect group project, and we were joined by one of my good friends from college, Dave and his fiance Marielle, who were visiting from Boston over the holidays.

The first step to make these cookies (or frankly, cookies using any cookie cutters of your choice if you're not into purses and shoes) is to prepare the dough for the sugar cookies (or perhaps they are really butter cookies?).  I used the following recipe:

4 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

3 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 sticks of unsalted butter (make sure the butter is cold)

2 cups granulated sugar

Using your mixer, beat the butter and the sugar well for a couple of minutes at medium speed.  Lower the speed and beat in the eggs and vanilla extract.  Then slowly add the dry ingredients and mix fully until it forms a cookie dough.

Roll out the dough on a large area using a rolling pin (you can use a bit of flour if the dough is too sticky) until it is about 1/4 inch thick.  Note:  I am not so great at this step, but someone who has a little more upper-body muscle can surely help out here.  Then, cut with the cookie cutters and bake the shapes at 350 F for about 15 minutes.

To make the Royal icing, I suggest purchasing and using a small bag from NY Cake (see links above).  We followed the instructions on the bag but added an extra tablespoon of water to make the icing a little easier to use.  Then we divided the icing into seven bowls and mixed with a drop or two (use very sparingly as the coloring is very strong) of the high-grade food colorings.  This turned out to be plenty of icing to color all the cookies.

Then for the fun part - Brad, Dave, Marielle and I "painted" the cookies to make them look like purses and shoes.  I would suggest using a set of inexpensive watercolor brushes (ones that are unused).  I had an inexpensive set of brushes that I intended to use for this project, but somehow had misplaced all but one or two of the brushes, so we used a combination of the brushes we had, and some spoons and other utensils.  This worked out just fine, actually, but NY Cake also sells fine tip plastic bottles for applying Royal icing, which I plan on investing in for my next Royal icing project.  The food colorings were fantastic, as the colors were vibrant and beautiful.  Such colorings can also be used when working with marzipan and fondant.  If the icing starts to harden in the bowls (because you and you friends don't decorate the cookies fast enough) you can add a teaspoon of water. 

Some of the cookies looked better artistically than others.  We did attempt to make a few "designer" purses, using as models a few dog-designer purses in my pug's toy collection (she has a few classics - Chewy Vuitton, Muttsoni, plus a Dolce & Grrrrbana Shoe).   This was a fun New Years Day project to do with out out of town friends and thus, I highly recommend such cookie parties as a great way to spend time with friends.

Future projects to look for in the New Year from my kitchen:  homemade limoncello, new salad recipes, homemade hard cheeses, tiramisu triffles, chicken marsala and glow-in-the-dark jello.

Purse
Baking

Sasha's Kitchen: Royal Iced Purse & Shoe Sugar Cookies