Nanny’s Pecan Sandie Roll-Outs {adapted from Jamie Border's Family recipe}

1/2 pound butter, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoon milk
2 teaspoons butter- vanilla emulsion
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
½ c finely chopped pecans

Cream together butter and powdered sugar. Add the milk and flavoring and mix well. Sift together flour and salt and add a half cupful at a time until well incorporated. Mix in pecans. If the dough is dry, add more milk as needed. Roll out and cut into shapes. Bake on ungreased cookie sheet at 325 for 8-10 minutes.


For the icing, I   used glaze because I know Nanny would have preferred it over royal icing.

Since I don't have much experience with glaze, I had to rely on the help of  two of my favorite glaze users, Amanda and Pam.  Using their recipes as a guide, I put together this icing.


Butter Vanilla Glaze Icing

2 cup Confectioners Sugar (powder sugar)
2 Tablespoon Milk
2 Tablespoon Light Corn Syrup
2 Teaspoons Butter Vanilla Baker’s Emulsion

Mix these together until a thick icing forms {for better instructions check out University of Cookie, Amanda does a video tutorial}

 My first experience with this recipe was almost two years ago when my friend Johnna sent me the most incredible box of cookies.  I was so surprised because not only were they chocolate chip, they were decorated! And to top it off, they were amazingly good!

The only problem was, she sent them to me on the very first day of one of my MANY diets.  So to  keep myself from eating them all I shared them with my friend Lori.

Since then, she has been begging me to make more.  When we got together to make cookies for our friend Jessica's baby shower, I decided it was probably about time.  Poor Lori ONLY had to wait two years =)

Lucky for me, when Johnna sent my cookies, she sent me the recipe, {She's sweet like that}  and she also mentioned that she had found it in the Sugarbakers’ Cookie Cutter Cookbook.  I was so impressed with this recipe, I decided to buy it!  It was worth the money. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes to bake cookies. 

I feel like I should mention, it’s not the book you’re looking for if it's pictures you want to see. That aspect is actually pretty LAME.  However, it contains SEVERAL recipes, and so far, all of them that I have tried have been wonderful!

Sugarbakers’ Chocolate Mini-Chip Cookies


1 c unsalted butter

⅓c granulated sugar

½ c light-brown sugar

1 large egg yolk

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 ½ c all-purpose flour {I think they got a little overzealous with the flour...try 2 cups first, and work your way up}

½ tsp salt

1 ½ c semi-sweet mini-chocolate chips



Cream together the butter and sugars. To that add the vanilla and egg yolk. Sift together the flour and salt, and add it one cup at a time until completely incorporated. Then, BY HAND fold in the chocolate chips. You can do it with your mixer, but it might break them up, so I would really just do it the old fashioned way =)


While you wait for the oven to warm, wrap your dough in plastic wrap and chill for at least thirty minutes. When it is chilled, roll out cookies on lightly floured parchment and bake at 350° for 10-12 minutes.

 

I have never been overwhelmingly interested in New Year parties, and the older I get, the more apparent it becomes.  I was SOOOO excited because this year I had nothing to do on New Year's Eve but stay home and try out some of the recipes I have been working on. 

They were all good, but my taste-testers (the Bern-Dogg family)  picked a winner hands down...

I have wanted to test this cookie for a LONG time, but just never had the time.  It made perfect sense to me, since some of my most favorite baked treats like scones and muffins are often this flavor. 

I tried this recipe two ways.  The first batch I iced with lemon royal icing, which is my RI flavored with vanilla and a splash of freshly squeezed lemon juice.


 The bottled stuff is fine, but my next  idea required real lemons anyway, so it only made sense to use the whole thing...



For the first batch, I made black-eye pea cutouts.  They were very tasty, but for the second batch I wanted something simpler, and not as sweet.  So, I decided to top them with lemon sugar. 

To make the lemon sugar, I zested two whole lemons, and mixed the zest with half a cup of light yellow sanding sugar.  {White sugar works just fine, but I was feeling "yellow", so I went with sanding sugar}


  






As far as Bern-Dogg is concerned, if I only made THESE cookies for the rest of forever, that's good enough for him ...

And the best part is, the kids LOVED them.  Surprisingly, they actually preferred these over the iced ones!

However if you are feeling industrious, this would be the PERFECT base cookie for something like this...

OR at least I hope it is.  I actually like new beginnings.  It's a fresh start, and I think as people, we NEED that.  We are not stationary creatures in most cases.  We change and we grow, along with the world around us.  When my best friend and I get all philosophical, we get to theorizing about what the world would be like if things never changed.  Reminds me of that AWFUL movie Groundhog Day. I HATE that movie.  That's pretty much a cinema interpretation of my worst nightmare.  I like to see where life takes us. 

The one constant is that everything changes, always.  If you need an example, just think of life at this time last year.  Funny the difference a year can make.

I have lots of goals, and some of the same old resolutions, which is what gave me the idea for these cookies.  A simple yet perfect treat for a New Year's party.  I went with the old faithful resolutions, but I can see these getting fun.  They can be religious, geared toward specific people, naughty...



Some of these resolutions are for me personally...


I think this is more of a life goal at this point, LOL...



For my poor husband's sake...


and, well, this isn't gonna happen, but it's the thought that counts, right?


I am really excited about the new year!  So much so, I made another collection.  Now, I suppose these might have looked really nice in a traditional black, silver, gold, and white, but I went with color.  First of all because I love it, and second of all, I forgot to order some gold shimmer spray before Christmas like I planned...and if it's not how I planned it, it just cannot be...


HMMM, maybe I better add, "LIGHTEN UP" or "GO WITH THE FLOW" to my list...

When I made this platter, I was particularly proud of my confetti cookies,  then yesterday, my cookie friend Meaghan posted an idea that made me like them EVEN more =)  Check out what she did with them!

And since like most people, I prefer to jump start my new year diet by eating excessive amounts of the things I plan on giving up, I went all-out and made these cookies chocolate.

They are too good not to share.  So, do your friends a favor, and make these to take to the big bash!



3/4 c butter

1 1/2 c granulated sugar

1/4 c dark corn syrup

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla (I like orange sometimes, also)

3-31/2 c flour

2/3 c cocoa powder, (I use 2 parts dark cocoa to one part regular)

1/2 tsp baking powder

Scant 1/2 tsp salt

Cream together butter and sugar. When light and fluffy, add eggs, vanilla and corn syrup. In a separate bowl sift together flour, cocoa powders, baking powder and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet once cupful at a time until all are incorporated.

              * Quick tip, start with 3 cups of flour, and add more if the dough is to sticky.

My super amazing SweetSugarBelle way to tell if it's too sticky is by whether the dough sticks to the paddle. If more of my dough is around the inside of the bowl, I can tell it’s not right. I like it best when it has just enough flour that it all glops up on the paddle like cotton candy.


Anyway, when I do this, the dough doesn’t need to be chilled. I’m not a dough chilling sort of girl, really. It just takes too long. Most of my recipes are from mixer to roll. But, If you want to chill it, do it your way.

Roll them out, and bake them for 8-9 minutes...AND NO TV during  bake time until you know what your oven is going to do with them.  WATCH your cookies!

There are no real rules to cookie making, except the basics that apply to all baking, like DON’T BURN THEM!



There aren’t really any universal recipes. You like what you are used to. So, if you hate this one, keep looking. Cookies are as unique as people's tastes!

Oh yes, and just to spare you the expense of buying about ten different types of cocoa powder like I did when I discovered there was a difference...I snapped this photo, just so you could see.

 The reddish one is regular old Ghiradelli stuff, and the darker one on the left is Hershey's Extra Dark, which I use because I live in the middle of nowhere and that's about the most sophisticated dark stuff I can get my hands on.


Also, if you love the cookie recipe you use, a good rule of thumb is to just substitute 1/2 a cup or so of cocoa powder for flour in your regular recipe.



I hope you learned something.  One of my goals for the year is to learn something new every day, and I hope I can pass along the same blessing!  What are YOUR resolutions?

A little over a week ago, I talked about two types of icing royal and glaze (there are more)  AND I asked you all which you preferred.  The responses were WONDERFUL y'all really made me think! 

However, when I mentioned in the post that oil is the enemy of royal icing, I got several comments from girls who DO add oil or shortening to their icing, which made me wonder... Am I completely right? Totally wrong?...Do I even know what I am talking about, or did I just regurgitate something I have been told without verifying...

Sad story first.  If you like the kind of finish I have on my cookies, oil IS the enemy!  I found this out the hard way (yet again) at 3am last week.  I was making an orange variation of my traditional cookie recipe,when I ran out of my usual flavoring...SOOOOOOO without thinking, I pulled out another bottle of orange extract, added it, and went on my merry way.   At about 2:30 am I took one last little looksie before I went to bed and my icing did not look right...I knew instantly what the problem was. I had seen it before.  I ran to grab my flavoring and verify, and sure enough, it was 11% orange oil.  I shouldn't really repeat the next words in my thought process that EARLY MORNING, but they went something like *BLERG, BLERG, BLERG, BLERG, EFFITY BLERG* (Did I mention they needed to be shipped to one of my favorite Californians the next morning?)  Another A+ for me in procrastination!

Now let me note, I don't really like to document my worst cookie failure EVER for all the world to read, but if it saves someone else the utter waste of 150 cookies going straight into the trash at 3am after 30 minutes of TEARS, I'll make an exception!

*Yes, I said 150 =(*

Alright, that's enough about my sorrows...the point of all this was for me to say, that WE ARE ALL right.  As soon as the comments came in, I  thought of two recipes off the top of my head that I KNEW used shortening.  One recipe, meringue powder buttercream belonged to Karen, of Karen's Cookies, the other to my cookie pal, Meaghan Mountford, author of Cookie Sensations...

From experience, I try not to make it a habit to talk about things I don't know anything about, so I decided to go straight to the source for those of you who WANT TO KNOW! I asked Meaghan her thoughts on the subject of icing and she was glad to share.

I have already taken up MORE than my fair share of this post *hey it's my blog, I can talk if I want to* so I'm going to turn things over to Meaghan and let HER give you "the skinny" on another type of cookie icing. 

It's NOT traditional royal icing.  In fact, Meaghan and I couldn't really decide what it was, but she threw out a few names for me...royal-ish icing, frostingesque, frostal...

I like Royal-ish Icing, so we'll go with that one...

So, without further ado (in other words, SHUT UP CALLYE)  Meet my friend, Meaghan, of the decorated cookie!

Hi everybody! It's Meaghan, from the decorated cookie. A bit of my cookie background: I was a cookie decorator at a little shop outside of Washington DC for almost ten years. In the three years since I left to have my daughter, I've branched out from cookies to work with cupcakes, marshmallows, fondant and any sweet I find interesting, and I share it all on the decorated cookie. I'm also the Edible crafts editor over at CraftGossip.com, where I constantly mine the Internet for sweet, crafty, clever people like you. Oh yes, and I wrote a book in 2007 on the art of cookie decorating, Cookie Sensations. Below are some of my creations you'll see on my blog.




I'm so happy to visit The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle to share my thoughts on a veeeery important cookie decorating topic: the icing. I dare say the icing is the most important part of cookie decorating, even more than the cookie itself. A bad texture or taste to your icing can ruin all your hard work, and finding a great go-to recipe is essential. That's why I'm so proud of the recipe I created for my book. I've amended it a bit here and there since, but it's the only recipe I use and I've made it so many times I can whip up a batch blindfolded.



As I'm sure many of you already know, traditional royal icing, ideal for cookie decorating because it dries hard, is made from egg whites and powdered sugar. I started with a traditional royal icing, but I added a few things, like shortening and light corn syrup, to improve the taste and texture. My recipe doesn't dry as rock hard as traditional royal icing, but left to dry overnight, it will dry well enough to handle, package, wrap and even ship your cookies. Plus, by substituting meringue powder (found in the craft store) for egg whites, you can mix up a batch easily and store leftover icing in air-tight containers for several weeks. Lastly, this icing freezes very well. (After decorating, let your cookies dry overnight, then wrap well in Ziploc bags and freeze. Let the cookies thaw completely in the Ziploc bags before removing.) You can also find this recipe and cookie recipes HERE at my blog. So here it is, my no-fail, trusty, go-to recipe for icing.


Meaghan's cookie decorating icing (Royal-ish Icing)

4 Tablespoons meringue powder
1/2 cup cold water
6 to 8 cups confectioner's sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 Tablespoons vegetable shortening (Crisco)
2 Tablespoons light corn syrup (optional)

In a standing mixer fitted with a wire whip, or with an electric hand mixer, mix the meringue powder and cold water on low, then switch to the highest speed and whip for several minutes until fluffy and stiff peaks form. Add about 3 cups of the confectioner's sugar, the vanilla, shortening and corn syrup (if using). Blend well. Add three more cups of confectioner's sugar and blend well. Add confectioner's sugar, 1/2 cup at a time up to 2 more cups (I usually end up with 7 cups total) until desired consistency. This icing is forgiving, you can add a bit more Crisco and/or light corn syrup to taste. And add more confectioner's sugar or water to thicken or thin.



A million thanks to Meaghan for taking the time to explain her icing recipe, and how she came up with it, and especially for putting up with the not-so-computer-savvy blogger...*raises hand*

How interesting!  Now, I realize that everyone has their own preference in icing and may not just drop everything and switch, but in the interest of all things cookie, I thought this was need-to-know info!  And, since you paid attention, I have a special surprise! 

I own this book, and it is one of my favorites.  I love her photos and tips, she has a great section on the history of shaped cookies, AND an awesome color chart.  Also, she is one of the most creative cookiers I know, which is high up on my list of my most respected traits in cookie decorators =)

There are two ways to win this book.

• Leave a comment about royalish icing...anything you please, as long as it's SWEET (the comment I mean)...whether you would be willing to try it, if you have tried it (for us scaredy-cats), or even a question...

• hop on over to FB and leave a comment letting me know which of my cookie designs is your favorite, and why =)  Come back here and let me know.

As always, tweeting this gets an bonus entry, just let me know =)  Just leave your email address with your comment so I can find you...

*If I can't find you, then you can't win, so make sure to leave something! Last day to enter is Sunday!

*START YOUR OVEN NOW!!! 375°*

•  ½ c butter flavor Crisco
• ½ c butter
• ½ c granulated sugar
• ½ c dark brown sugar
• 1 ¼c unsulphured molasses (do like Giada says, and Pam it first.  It pours much easier)
• 1 tsp orange extract
• 1 tsp ornage zest (save the orange to flavor your RI)
• 2 eggs
• 5-5 ½c all-purpose flour (sometimes even six)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 3 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 ½ tsp ground cloves
• 2 tsp ground nutmeg
• ¼- ½ tsp ground white pepper (optional for some, a must for me)

Cream together shortening butter and granulated sugar. To that, add the molasses and eggs.

*remember to crack your eggs into a separate dish and beat them a little before adding them to the mix so you don't end up with egg shell or scrambled egg in your cookies*

Whip that until it’s light and fluffy…then sift all of your dry ingredients into a large bowl. When you get that all incorporated, use a measuring cup to add the dry ingredients about a cup at a time.
This dough NEEDS to be chilled for AT LEAST an hour. Its sticky and wet, so if it isn’t cold, rolling and cutting is misery. 

To cut out the cookies, use flour and parchment paper. Working with small pieces of dough, dust the paper with flour and roll out to somewhere between a quarter and half inch. You will have to dust the top of the dough with flour also. If you want to freeze them a little before baking, that's okay...Bake 375°for 9-11 minutes.

These smell and taste wonderful.  I have saved a fortune in candles since gingerbread season began =)