Buttercookies: Butterflies

Butter cookies are one of my favorite types of cookies to make. The main downside to making butter cookies is that it can be very time consuming; it all depends on how much you want to decorate them. I typically decorate butter cookies with frosting, sometimes adding sugar as well. I prefer using a butter cookie recipe when decorating cookies with frosting because you aren't overwhelmed with sweetness when you eat the cookies.

I always use the butter cookie recipe that I got from my grandma many years ago. It is easy, has few ingredients, and doesn't have too strong of a flavor.

Butter Cookie Recipe (Printer-friendly PDF Version)

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

3 egg yolks

2 1/2 cups flour

Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy. Add the egg yolks and vanilla and mix until combined. Add half of the flour and mix until combined. Add the rest of the flour and mix until it is as combined as the mixer will allow. At this point you will most likely have to finish mixing in the flour by hand. The easiest way to do this by folding the dough into itself until there are no crumbly bits left. You don't want to over mix cookie dough, always mix until just combined unless the directions say otherwise.

Cover and chill the cookie dough for at least a half hour. I typically chill the cookie dough over night. The downside to doing this is that the dough gets very hard. You will either have to let the dough sit out for a half hour until soft enough to work with or carefully warm it in the microwave. If you use a microwave, warm the dough for 6 seconds at a time on a very low power level (I usually use power level 2).

Roll out the cookie dough on a well floured surface to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut shapes into the dough with desired cookie cutters. I used butterflies this time! Peeling away the excess cookie dough makes it easier to lift up the shapes without distorting them. Place cutouts on a baking sheet at least a half inch apart. They generally don't spread too much when baked; the spacing makes it easier to remove the baked cookies from the sheet.

Bake the cookies at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Cool the cookies completely before decorating with frosting! These cookies can be very fragile, so be careful when handling them or you will have broken cookies.

For frosting, I tend to use the recipe that I learned while taking the Wilton Cake Decorating classes. I cut the recipe in half except for the amount of meringue powder.

Wilton Frosting
1 cup shortening
6 T water
1 tsp clear vanilla
1 T meringue powder
1 box powder sugar (approximately 4 cups)

Combine shortening, water, and vanilla. Mix well. Add meringue powder and powder sugar. Mix on low speed for 2 minutes for frosting with minimum air bubbles. For fluffy frosting, beat on medium speed for 4 minutes.

I made the frosting while the last sheet of cookies were in the oven. This gives the cookies enough time to cook if you start with the first sheet that came out (if not, place the cookie sheet in the freezer for a few minutes). Since I used colored sugars in the decorating process, I didn't color the frosting. Any design can be made on the cookies, so be as creative as you like.

To apply frosting to the cookies, I used a parchment bag with a size 3 tip.

It is easiest to start decorating the butterflies by frosting the body first. Once the body area is covered, place the cookie top down into the colored sugars. To add each color, pipe the frosting onto the cookie in the desired design and place the cookie top down into the sugars. It is best to use the darker colored sugars before the lighter colors. Otherwise, the light sugared areas will have dark colored crystals in them.

Here are two trays of finished cookies.

The recipe makes approximately 4 dozen cookies; it all depends on the size of cookie cutter you use.

Approximate Nutrition facts (per cookie for 4 dozen per batch, plain): 54 calories, 4g fat, 9g carbs, 30mg sodium.

Doggie Cookies: A First Attempt

This is Lucky, he is a cocker spaniel. He will eat almost anything. He hates it when I bake because I don't share the food with him. He doesn't digest a lot of dog treats very well, especially treats that contain food coloring.

This is Bichon, he is a bichon frise (I didn't name him). He is a very, very picky eater when it comes to dog food and treats.

I've wanted to make dog treats for months. Homemade treats are probably healthier for dogs than the treats you buy at the store, which are made with filler ingredients and food coloring. I've looked for a decent dog treat recipe online, but I didn't like most of them. The various recipes I found did give me a general idea of where to start to make my own recipe. I tested out one of the recipes I created today.

Lucky loves peanut butter flavored anything, so I started with peanut butter. Oatmeal is good for dogs, as long is it is the kind that comes in the cardboard cylinder and isn't sweetened with sugars. During my research I found out that dogs can eat almost any fruit (except grapes!), and I had some bananas going bad, so I added some banana. Flour and water hold almost anything together, so I included as well.

This is the recipe I came up with:

Peanut Butter & Banana Doggie Cookies

1/4 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup uncooked oatmeal, the slow cooking kind

1/2 banana (mashed)

1 cup flour

1/2 cup water (approximately)

Combine the peanut butter, oatmeal, and banana in a bowl until well mixed and crumbly. I mixed it by hand, but you can use a mixer. Add flour and mix well. Slowly add the water until the mixture is smooth and kind of dough-like. Adding too much water will cause it to be sticky. If you add too much water, that is easily fixed: add flour by the spoonful until the dough isn't sticky.

On a well floured surface, roll out the dough to desired thickness (I did 1/4 of an inch). Cut out shapes with cookie cutters, making sure to press down hard to get through any oats. Peeling away extra dough from the cut outs will make them easier to pick up and transfer to a cookie sheet. Repeat until all dough is used.

Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool completely on wire cookie rack before feeding to your dog. Makes 2 dozen cookies.

Lucky happily ate the cookies and wanted more!

The ultimate test was giving one to Bichon. He enjoyed it, but I had to break the cookie into small pieces.

The baking time can be increased for crunchier cookies or decreased for softer cookies. The recipe should be fine to double or triple. Whole wheat flour may be used instead of white flour.

Approximate nutrition facts per cookie: 38 calories,1.5g fat, .5g fiber, 1.5g protein.

Blue blue blue

I was supposed to make a cake for a baby shower this past weekend. That didn't happen for various reasons. I had to make cupcakes instead. I didn't want the cupcakes to be boring white cupcakes, however. The baby is a boy, so I made blue cupcakes. Not simple blue cupcakes.

The frosting was 3 different blues. Light blue, medium blue, and teal. You can't really see the light blue in this picture, but I'm not lying... there was light blue. To make the frosting swirly like this, I had to put the three different blues into the same frosting bag side by side. It wasn't very easy. I had to wash the bag between each filling. If I do this again, I'll have to get a larger frosting bag!

So, that's pretty. A nice blue cupcake. That wasn't good enough for me. This is what the inside looked like:

Three different shades of blue; the same shades as the frosting. The bottom is light blue, the middle is teal, and the top is medium blue. I colored the frosting & cake batter using the gel Wilton icing colors (the liquid colors may have watered down the batter too much... didn't want to risk that). Mixing the cake mix so much to add the color condensed the white cake batter so much that 2 box mixes made barely 36 cupcakes instead of 48. This made the cupcake texture very creamy. It was amazing :)

I plan on making other cupcakes like this. I'd love to do a Neapolitan cupcake with vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate flavored cake batter. Mmm...