I Don't Think It's Supposed To Take Me 3 Days To Make Sugar Cookies

Lately I've had the urge to bake something and I'm not talking Pillsbury open the package and pop it in the oven stuff here. I'm talking about baking something from scratch.

And it's all Amanda's fault.

Friends, you have got to check her blog out. She bakes and decorates the prettiest sugar cookies ever. She's even won contests for her cookies.

Oh yeah. I want to be an Amanda.

So, after thinking about trying my hand at baking and decorating sugar cookies for the past two weeks, I decided to start them on Sunday.

I used her recipe which was very easy. I've never rolled cookies before but I really got into it and felt like a Bakerista. No, that isn't a real word but it can be if you pretend along with me, can't it??

Here are my cookies.



They taste every bit as good as they look. At this point I didn't know how they were going to make it to the decorating stage of things because they were so good. The children kept eyeing them!

Baking and cooling the cookies were about all I did on Monday. I think I ate too many of them and started to feel sick and kind of bored looking at them, so I decided to go to bed.

On Tuesday I was all refreshed and ready to start the decorating process. Amanda also has a very easy recipe for a version of royal icing and it mixed up really easily. Step One was to outline the cookies with the icing. This is to form an edge so that when the rest of the cookie gets filled in, the icing won't run over.

I pulled out my disposable cake decorating bags and decorating tips and I was on fire to get started. I filled the bag, chose a tip and started to outline my cookies.

Everything seemed to go well until all of a sudden the bag burst. UGH! I didn't think I was squeezing that hard but maybe I don't know my own strength or something.

So, I moved on to a plastic bottle with a squeeze tip. This was really easy and I was gettin' things done when all of a sudden the top popped off and this is what happened...



I know. I couldn't believe it either. Imagine my frustration when this happened a second time.

Poor Katie...

I didn't know what was the best way to fill in the cookies. I really wanted to email Amanda to ask, but I email her enough to be on the fence between being friendly and being a stalker. So...I muddled through on my own. I used my defective squeezy bottle, I used a spoon, I tried to pour the icing directly. I wasn't having fun.

Here are a handful of cookies, filled in and ready for decorating.



At this point I had had enough and called it a day.

Today I planned to decorate my cookies. I looked at ideas on some of the baking websites I like and was pumped up with confidence and rip roaring ready to go. My first batch of icing was too thin and went right through my tip. I tried adding more icing sugar and that thickened it up too much. Frustrated, I started over.

Once I had a consistency that I could work with, I pulled out my food colouring. I am almost ashamed to admit this, but since we're all friends here I'll tell you. I don't know what colours mixed with what colours make new colours. First I googled the colour wheel but I couldn't make sense of it, so I called my children in to the kitchen to tell me.

I know, I know. Love me anyway.

I couldn't get the colours I wanted no matter how hard I tried, and the more food colouring I added in my efforts to produce my colours, the thinner my icing became.

By this time I took what icing I had and decorated a handful of cookies.

See?



I give up! I'm sending the remaining undecorated cookies to the cookie jar for consumption!

I did hold back two cookies for the children's lunches tomorrow...



I get that practice makes perfect, but I don't think that it should take three days to produce pretty cookies!

If anyone has any tips for me on how to make this process easier, bring it on! In the meantime, I'm going to go enjoy a naked cookie ;-)