Cookie Craft Christmas: Dozens of Decorating Ideas for a Sweet Holiday
169
Cookie Craft Christmas: Dozens of Decorating Ideas for a Sweet Holiday
169eBook
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Overview
Take your holiday cookie decorating to impressive new heights! Valerie Peterson and Janice Fryer will have you sprinkling powdered snowflakes onto cheery snowmen and adding a sugary glimmer to multicolored strands of licorice lights. With more than 60 fabulous designs for Christmas cookies, plus festive delights for New Year’s and Hanukkah, Cookie Craft Christmas gives you the inspiration and simple instructions you need for batch after batch of deliciously show-stopping holiday cheer.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781603426640 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Storey Publishing, LLC |
| Publication date: | 10/07/2009 |
| Sold by: | Hachette Digital, Inc. |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 169 |
| Sales rank: | 1,035,183 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
About the Author
Valerie Peterson is the co-author of Cookie Craft and Cookie Craft Christmas, and the author of Peterson’s Happy Hour and Peterson’s Holiday Helper. Prior to her full-time writing career, she worked for various publishers including Random House and John Wiley. She lives in Manhattan, New York.
Janice Fryer is co-author of Cookie Craft and Cookie Craft Christmas. She is a Pastry Arts graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City, and lives in New York.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
First Things First: Making Cookies
All of our Cookie Craft Christmas creations start with delicious sugar cookies, yummy gingerbread, or rich chocolaty cookies. We developed the recipes and the rolling-chilling-cutting technique here to ensure a smooth surface for your successful holiday designs. Be sure to check out the Pre-baking Decorating Techniques (page 12) for easy ways to embellish your cookies before they go into the oven. Many of the more elaborate designs here are made with royal icing; if you've never used it before, we give you recipes and handy hints (pages 15–21) to ensure your decorating fun.
RECIPE
Rolled Sugar Cookies
YIELD
* 2 ½-inch cookies: about 30
* 3 ½-inch cookies: about 16
* 4 ½-inch cookies: about 12
INGREDIENTS
* 3 cups all-purpose flour
* ½ teaspoon salt
* 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
* 1 cup sugar
* 1 large egg
* 2 teaspoons vanilla or 1 teaspoon vanilla plus zest of 1 lemon
(Instead of vanilla, you can use other extracts such as almond or peppermint, which we like for candy-cane shapes. If you're going to be decorating with royal icing, make sure the cookie and icing flavorings are complementary.)
* Food coloring (if your cookie design calls for it)
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Whisk together the flour and salt in a medium bowl.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar with your mixer until light and fluffy. Add the egg, vanilla, and lemon zest (if you're using it) and mix until well blended.
3. With the mixer on low, gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture until the two are thoroughly blended. If your design calls for adding food coloring, do so now, and blend well.
4. Turn the dough onto a work surface and divide into two or three equal portions. Form each one into a rough disk. Now you're ready to roll, chill, and cut out cookie shapes. Find complete rolling and cutting instructions on page 9.
5. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
6. After you've rolled and cut the dough and the cookie shapes are on parchment-lined cookie sheets, bake them in the middle rack of your oven for 12 to 16 minutes or until the cookies start to turn slightly golden around the edges.
7. Cool the cookies completely before icing or decorating.
RECIPE
Rolled Chocolate Cookies
Try these cookies any time you desire a chocolate-flavored cookie or a darker background for your decorative genius.
YIELD
* 2 ½-inch cookies: about 30
* 3 ½-inch cookies: about 16
* 4 ½-inch cookies: about 12
INGREDIENTS
* 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
* ½ cup cocoa powder, either alkalized (Dutch-process) or natural (non-alkalized)
* 1 teaspoon instant espresso powder (optional but recommended)
* ½ teaspoon salt
* 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
* 1 cup sugar
* 1 large egg
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, espresso powder, and salt in a medium bowl.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar with your mixer until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until well blended.
3. With the mixer on low, gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture until the two are thoroughly blended.
4. Turn the dough onto a work surface and divide into two or three equal portions. Form each one into a rough disk. Now you're ready to roll, chill, and cut out cookie shapes. Find complete rolling and cutting instructions on page 9.
5. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
6. After you've rolled and cut the dough and the cookies are on parchment-lined cookie sheets, bake them on the middle rack of your oven for 12 to 16 minutes or until the cookies start to turn a deeper brown around the edges.
7. Cool the cookies completely before decorating.
RECIPE
Rolled Gingerbread Cookies
These cookies have a mild gingerbread flavor, and they make the kitchen smell wonderful while they're baking.
YIELD
* 2 ½-inch cookies: about 48
* 3 ½-inch cookies: about 37
* 4 ½-inch cookies: about 18
INGREDIENTS
* 5 cups all-purpose flour
* 2 teaspoons ground ginger
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon ground cloves
* ½ teaspoon baking soda
* ½ teaspoon salt
* zest of 1 orange (optional)
* 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
* 1 cup sugar
* 1 large egg
* 1 cup molasses
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Whisk together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, baking soda, salt, and orange zest (if you're using it) in a medium bowl.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar with your mixer until light and fluffy. Add the egg and molasses and mix until well blended.
3. With the mixer on low, gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture until the two are thoroughly blended.
4. Turn dough onto a work surface and divide into three equal portions. Form each one into a rough disk. Now you're ready to roll, chill, and cut out cookie shapes. Find complete rolling and cutting instructions on page 9.
5. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
6. After you've rolled and cut the dough and the cookies are on parchment-lined cookie sheets, bake them on the middle rack of your oven for 12 to 16 minutes or until the cookies start to turn a deeper brown around the edges.
7. Cool the cookies completely before decorating.
CHAPTER 2
Ready to Roll: Rolling, Cutting, and Baking Dough
We use two pieces of waxed paper and two wooden strips we call cookie slats to roll out our dough before it is chilled. This method has many advantages: The rolled dough is a perfectly even thickness (ensuring smooth, uniform cookies); it chills quickly for cutting; and you don't need to use extra flour to prevent the dough from sticking (it won't stick to the waxed paper), so your dough doesn't get dry. Any smooth kitchen surface will do for rolling cookies when you follow these simple steps. Lining your cookie sheets with parchment paper will prevent sticking and facilitate cleanup — we highly recommend it.
1. Place a piece of waxed paper about the size of your cookie sheet on your rolling surface.
2. Place cookie slats on the edges of the paper. The slats should be a rolling-pin width apart, to ensure that there's stable contact between the slats and both ends of the rolling pin.
3. Place a disk of cookie dough on top of the waxed paper, between the slats. Place another sheet of waxed paper over the cookie dough and slats and use your hand or rolling pin to slightly flatten and evenly distribute the dough across the paper. Roll the pin over the waxed paper-covered dough, making sure the ends of the pin stay on the slats as the dough flattens (the pin will hover above the slats at first).
If the top paper wrinkles, lift and smooth it. You're finished rolling when the dough surface is uniform and completely level with the cookie slats. You'll recognize this point: rolling the pin over the dough will feel effortless.
4. Slide the rolled-out piece of dough (paper and all) onto a cookie sheet and refrigerate until it's firm, 20 to 30 minutes. Repeat the rolling process with the remaining dough portions.
5. When the dough is firm and stiff, transfer it from the refrigerator to your flat work surface. Work with one piece of dough at a time, leaving the others to chill in the refrigerator until you're ready to cut them. Peel back the top waxed paper from the dough and cut your desired shapes. Try to get as many cookies as possible out of each rolled-out piece of dough.
6. Remove excess dough from around the shapes. Transfer the cookies to a parchment-lined cookie sheet.
7. When you've cut as many cookies as possible from all your rolled dough, gather the dough scraps into a ball and roll it again, using the same waxed-paper method. Continue to cut cookies and reroll the dough until you've used all the dough, chilling the rolled-out dough whenever it becomes too sticky to work with.
8. If you're using any of the prebaking decorating methods (imprinting, sugaring, add-ons, and so on), now's the time to get decorating.
9. Bake and cool the cookies as directed in the recipes.
Prebaking Decorating Techniques
The cookie crafter's repertoire should include the gamut of easy, versatile prebaking techniques. From imprinting to add-ons, these techniques can be used in combination with royal icing or by themselves to create beautiful, whimsical, or just plain fun cookie designs.
Imprinting Before Baking
Imprinting your cookie dough before baking — that is, pressing designs into the raw dough — creates visual interest or highlights cookie features. We've used spatulas, toothpicks, drinking straws, and a variety of other household items to create particular imprinted designs. For example, you can use the blade of a small knife to mark lines on a holly leaf, like those on page 33.
Making Holes or Cutouts
Perforating your cookies is a simple technique that delivers a wide range of effects. Little round holes are useful for "stringing" an ornament or Christmas lights, and fancier shapes add interest to snowflakes. Use a plastic drinking straw to punch circles in unbaked dough. Sets of tiny aspic cutters come in shapes that broaden your cutout options (see Resources).
Making Windowpanes
Add crushed candies to your cutouts and you'll have windowpanes, which give your Christmas cookies a beautiful, see-through stained-glass effect. To crush hard candies, place them in a double-layer ziplock bag and smash them with a hammer until they're powdery or in tiny shards. Completely fill the holes in the cookie dough with candy. Bake the cookies according to recipe instructions; the candy will melt to create windowpanes. Cool the cookies completely on the cookie sheet before removing to allow the melted candy to harden.
Coloring Dough
Generally speaking, adding supermarket liquid food coloring to cookie dough will yield softer colors. Gel or paste food coloring from a baking specialty shop (see Resources) will give you more saturated, vibrant colors. Whichever coloring you use, add just a drop at a time — you can always add more, but you can't take away!
Adding Dimension to Cookies
Add a second layer of dough detail to your base cookies to create dimension. To achieve this effect, cut out the desired shapes and place them on top of the base cookie before baking. You can even mix and match doughs. Dimensional cookies generally take no more time to bake than single-layer cookies.
Sugaring Before Baking or Attaching Candy Add-Ons
Sugaring a cookie adds color and sparkle and couldn't be simpler: Just sprinkle the sugar on unbaked cookies, making sure to fully cover the areas you want to decorate. To attach other add-ons — candy, confetti, dragées, and so forth — press them firmly onto the unbaked cookies.
After-Baking Decorating Techniques
A cookie decorated with royal icing is sure to impress — and even if your first tries are less than exquisite, the process is fun and creative. In this section you'll find royal icing recipes, a variety of techniques to use with the icing, and a wealth of information and tips to help you master the process. It might take a little practice to get the results you want, but you'll have a good time doing it.
Royal icing results are very weather dependent — you may get one result on a dry day, and find it much more challenging to achieve the same consistency when it's raining. Just remember, it all tastes good!
Making Royal Icing
Making royal icing is very easy, but it's not an exact science. Decorating success depends on the consistency of the icing, and there are many variables (especially weather), so read through the entire section carefully before you begin.
We provide three recipes that use three different forms of egg whites: powdered egg whites, liquid pasteurized egg whites, or meringue powder; we use them interchangeably, depending on what we have on hand. To make any of them, first ensure that your bowls are spotless. Any amount of grease will prevent the icing from whipping properly.
Lemon juice is our favorite royal icing flavoring, and vanilla extract is a good all-purpose flavoring, as well. You can experiment with other extracts too — for example, use peppermint in the icing for candy-cane cookies.
Although amounts will vary depending on your designs, in general a -pound recipe of piping royal icing and a 1-pound recipe of flood royal icing will pipe, flood, and detail two to three batches of rolled sugar cookies. Plan on more icing for elaborately iced cookies.
The method for making the icing is the same no matter what type of egg-white product you've used:
1. Combine all ingredients in the bowl of your electric mixer.
2. Beat on high for 5 minutes if you're using an electric stand mixer or for 10 minutes if you're using an electric hand mixer. (If your mixer has multiple attachments, use the paddle.)
3. When you reach the desired consistency, it's important that you immediately cover the mixture (it dries out quickly) or divide it into separate airtight containers for coloring (see page 19).
Use the water amounts in our icing recipes as starting points, but be prepared to adjust them depending on the weather or even your kitchen temperature. Be aware that the amount of water you add to the icing may change slightly every time you make it.
Piping Consistency Tips
When first mixed, piping icing will start out with the consistency of white glue. When you've finished beating the icing, it will be glossy, with a consistency similar to that of toothpaste.
* The icing should squeeze easily out of a #2 tip but should stay in place and hold its shape on the cookie when it lands.
* If the icing is too stiff, it'll be hard to squeeze from the pastry bag and may lift up off the cookie when you finish the outline or detail.
* If the icing is too loose, it will spread and make too shallow an outline to dam the flood icing.
* Test the icing consistency before you fill the pastry bags. Just put a small amount into the tip and, pushing it through with your thumb, make a practice loop or two on a piece of waxed paper or your kitchen counter. Even though they might overlap, the loops should remain distinct rather than run together.
Flood Consistency Tips
* When first mixed, flood icing will appear very soupy. Never fear! In 5 minutes your icing will be shiny and white, with the consistency of heavy cream.
* This icing shouldn't be so thin that it runs like water or that its cookie coverage is transparent, and it shouldn't be so thick that it stays in place when you squirt it onto the cookie. It should immediately flow toward the piped borders
* If your icing is too thick, add water 1 tablespoon at a time and beat for 1 minute after each addition. Test and repeat until you reach the desired consistency.
* If your icing is too thin, add confectioners' sugar 1 tablespoon at a time and beat for 1 minute after each addition. Test and repeat until you reach the desired consistency.
Coloring Your Icing
1. To make each color icing, work with one airtight container at a time and keep the others tightly covered.
2. Add the desired food coloring, one drop at a time, to the icing (remember, you can always make a color deeper, but it's much harder to lighten it). Mix in the drops well until you have your desired color.
3. When matching flood and piping icing colors, you'll need to add different amounts of food coloring to each to achieve the same color because of the two icings' different consistencies.
Preparing to Pipe and Flood
This section explains how to set up pastry bags and fill squeeze bottles. You'll need one pastry bag set-up for each piping icing color and one squeeze bottle for each flood color.
Filling the Squeeze Bottle
After coloring your flood icing, pour each color into a separate squeeze bottle and screw on the top. If the squeeze top doesn't have a little cap, stick a toothpick in the hole to keep your icing from drying.
Filling the Pastry Bag
1. After you've colored your piping icing, hold a prepared pastry bag fitted with a #2 tip and cuff the bag over your fist. (See below.)
2. Using a spoon, scoop the icing into the bag as deep as you can toward the tip. Don't overfill the bag — half-full is ideal.
3. Unfold the bag and shake it firmly with a snapping motion so that the icing moves toward the tip. Twist the top of the bag to seal in the contents and compress the icing, minimizing any air pockets.
4. Fasten the bag with a twist tie at the top of the icing. Tightly tie a second twist tie toward the top end of the bag to seal in any icing smears on the upper part of the bag.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Cookie Craft Christmas"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Valerie Peterson and Janice Fryer.
Excerpted by permission of Storey Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction,
PART ONE: RECIPES & TECHNIQUES,
First Things First: Making Cookies,
Prebaking Decorating Techniques,
After-baking Decorating Techniques,
PART TWO: COOKIE INSPIRATIONS,
Holiday Cookie Designs,
PART THREE: SHIPPING & PARTY PLANNING,
Shipping Decorated Cookies,
Cookie Swap Parties,
Resources,
Other Storey Titles,
Copyright,
Share Your Experience,