Sunday, April 22, 2012

Wedding Shower Cookies


We have been away in PA.  For two years I have been working with friends on a wedding shower and this past weekend was the day.  One of the favors for the party was cookies shaped like wedding cakes.  I cannot take credit for this idea as I got it and the recipes from my sister-in-law, Tammy.  I will tell you that it takes a village to make these cookies, but in the end you have a work of art that tastes out of this world delicious. 
Some of the crew that helped:


 




The cookie recipe is from surlatable.com.  It is impossible to tell you how many cookies you will get from a batch as it depends on the size of your cookie cutter.  We got 30 wedding cake cookies from 3 batches. 
Ingredients:
1 C butter, softened
1 C granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ t vanilla extract
3 ¾ C all-purpose flour
2 t baking powder
¼ C heavy whipping cream
Directions:
1.      In a medium bowl of your mixer, cream together butter and sugar.  
2.      Add eggs, and vanilla. 
3.      Sift together flour and baking powder; stir into creamed mixture, alternating with the heavy cream. 
4.      Cover dough and chill for 2-3 hours until firm. 
5.      Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 
6.      Grease cookie sheets and cover with parchment paper.  (Using parchment paper rather than silpat liners will keep the cookies a more even color. Dark surfaces equals darker cookies.  We didn’t want brown as we were doing wedding cookies.)
7.      On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to ¼” thickness. 
8.      Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters. 
9.      Place cookies 1” apart on prepared cookie sheets.
10.  Bake 12-14 minutes in preheated oven until bottom and edges are light brown. 
11.  Remove from baking sheet and cool on wire racks.   
Royal Icing This recipe was downloaded from www.wilton.com/recipe/Royal-Incing
Ingredients:
3 T Meringue Powder
4 C (about 1 #) confectioners’ sugar
6 T warm water
Makes:  About 3 cups of icing (We made 2 batches for the 30 cookies with extra for decoration.
Directions:
1.      Beat all ingredients until icing forms peaks (7-10 minutes at low speed with a heavy-duty mixer, 10-12 minutes at high speed with a hand-help mixer.)
2.      The stiffer icing was used to make the piping around the edges of the cookie cutter.  This was very hard and I recruited the boys for this job. 
3.      To thin for flooding the icing on the cookies, add 1 t water per cup of royal icing.  I used this thin icing to flood the icing between the piping on the cookies. 
4.      As soon as you ice the cookie hand off to an assistant who will sprinkle on the sugars or other eatable decorations immediately.  Once the icing sets, nothing sticks to it. 
Thanks to my wonderful creative assistants some that didn’t get photographed no two cookies were alike.    



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