Alphabet Cookies in a Jar

Before I start I just want to remind you of my Give away.  So come check it out and enter!

You know what, I don't even know if I spelled that right.

  I love making sugar cookies, there are so many things to do with them.  Other than eating, you know because food should be multipurpose right?  So when I was making like 1000 cookies this week I had a lot of extra dough left over.  Not to be confused with "dough" which would mean money, which would mean I would not be baking, I would be shopping.  Anyway.....

  So I had lots left over, and as luck would have it I made a mistake and added too much flour to the last batch of dough.  This resulted in the dough being hard to roll out, but it made for a cookie that hardly spreads out.  The taste was still great, a little crisper than I like, but you know, once you cover it is icing, does it really matter?

I saw the tooth pick tip on a blog, and I feel horrible that I cannot remember which one.  It stops the glaze from dripping out.  Big help.

  I started by cutting out a million little circles using the smallest cookie cutter I have.  They are a little bigger than a quarter.  Once baked I let them cool then got to work decorating.

  I use the glaze recipe from Amanda at I am Baker.  It was the first glaze I used and I have not stopped, it is so good!  Only issue is it takes longer to dry than royal icing, but crusts really fast.  So I made up some icing in a few colours using Americolor soft gel paste.  I made my glaze and thinned it out to be just a little thinner than piping consistency and just a little thicker than flood consistency.  I did this so that I could outline and flood my cookies in one step. So saving me from using plastic bottles and piping bags.  Anything to save time people!  And since the circles are so small this was really fast.

I started off with a number 2 tip, then found it took so long, so I switched up to a 3.  This is the steps of outlining and flooding, but of coarse backwards, what can I say?  I think differently.

 I filled my bags with glaze and used a number 3 tip.  It is big enough to get a nice outline and flood without being too big or too small.  So outline the cookie then right away fill it in.  Then sort of shake the cookie back and forth on the table to settle the lines.  If you need to you can go back and use a tooth pick to help spread the icing out.

  Now I wanted to be fancy and was thinking of doing wet on wet icing.  But then I figure I would probably  want to poke my own eyes out after about 10 cookies.  With glaze working wet on wet means you have to do the colours right away, the glaze crusts over so fast.  With royal icing you can work a few cookies at a time.  So I let my cookies dry for an hour or so then went back to finish them. (really I just finished flooding, tidied up a bit then went on to the next step, so well under an hour.)

  To start I used a disposable piping bag, because if you can cut down on what you have to wash at the end, you are much happier.  Trust me.

The one on the left is regular piping, the one on the right is wet on wet, see how it just blends.

  To show you wet on wet and how the look is different I did a few cookies, because I love you all.  But I don't love you enough to do them all.

  At least you know where we stand in this relationship.

 For wet on wet, you flood your cookie then right away pipe on the next colour, a letter for this one.  The two icings should melt together and it becomes flat.  It's really neat, but like I said, time consuming.

I just piped letters, no rhyme or reason, but then my Mom was watching Pork Chop and they ate their names.  So I was low on some letters.  But I still love them, kind of.

 Anyway once they had dried, which really did not take long.  I used a 1.5 tip, these are special tips I read about on other blogs, and I went searching for them.  They are like $5 each!  So I have two, that is it, and I do not use them much.  I am afraid if I do I will like them and then what would I do?  Buy more I suppose, but you know Hubby is on to me and my shopping, so we have to keep it reasonable for some things.  Notice I said some things, I am not insane people!

  So I made a black icing and started making letters.  I thought this would be fun so whomever they are for can work on their spelling.  I need to work on that too, thank goodness for spell check.  And even then I suck.  Oh well.

 Pork chop ( my son) is getting a tutor this month, so I thought this would sort of be fun for him.  He will probably not agree. But I am the mom, so if I say it's fun, it's fun darn it!

  So I left them to dry over night and then got a few jars.  Since they are small you can get a good deal in one jar, but my mom has been saving these huge soup jars for me so I used that.  Then you can make a label and give them to the ones you love.   Or like I did, just eat a bunch and give a few in a baggie to your friends at work.  It's all the same, my friends know how to spell already anyway. (I bought a bunch of dissolving canning labels at Walmart on boxing day, just for something like this.)

I just wrote the label, I hate my writing, but it says A B C cookies.

  And if you are immature like me you spell "naughty" words and take pictures of it.  Because that is what all the mature mom's do. Right?  Fine, this is what I do.  And it's my blog so there!  (Imagine me sticking my tongue out at you and making faces, again mature I am not!)

I wrote "poop"  ha!

  This is just one idea, I have seen a  bunch of other great ideas, where bloggers made snow man faces to put together, jack o lanterns and such.  I was not so creative, but you know, they all taste good.

  The cookies are again from Amanda at I am Baker, they are so good.  Check her site out, it's worth a look.  Here is my post with the recipe. Let me know if you have tried it yet, you will be hooked once you do!