Sugar Cookies, Simplified.

I have a confession. I hate decorating cookies. Well, I don't hate it. I'm just not very good at it, therefore I don't enjoy it. My hands aren't very steady, and I can't grip a piping bag for more than 5 minutes before my fingers start cramping. So I'm always looking for creative ways to "cheat" when it comes to frosting and decorating cookies (and cakes too, for that matter.)

As the designated baker for my large family, I'm expected to bring platters and platters of our favorite Christmas sugar cookies. This year, I tried to come up with a fun way to deliver maximum cookies, for minimum effort, and still present them in a creative way. (Plus, package them in a container that won't take up valuable trunk space in our car.)

My solution: 100+ scalloped square sugar cookies, filling a box I made out of foam core, frosted white to look like a snowy field, and topped with some little plastic deers and wintery trees.

They're still everyone's favorite homemade sugar cookies with buttercream icing, just simplified. And I didn't have to kill myself spending hours and hours decorating them. 

Happy baking and happy holidays!

Two foam core boxes with lids, filled with cookies, and ready to travel.

Ice Skating Penguin Cookies

It's cookie-baking-palooza at our house.  Cookies for school parties. Cookies for office get-togethers. Cookies for family holiday gatherings. Cookies. Cookies. Cookies.

I made these ice skating penguin cookies for an office party at WSU this week. I used my favorite, simple, Kansas Sugar Cookie recipe, frosted with a light blue, lemon-y royal icing. The penguins are made from black licorice jelly beans. I added white chocolate eyes, bellies and skates, and used orange Nerd candies for the itty bitty beaks. If you look closely, you can see the little skate marks on the frosting "ice."

They made a fun & festive addition to our potluck party table.

* FYI... I made more of these for our family Christmas gatherings and couldn't find any more black jelly beans for the penguins, so I used Junior Mints instead. They were just as cute, and even more refreshing!

Edible, Colorful, Christmas Tree Cookies

They may look too pretty to eat, but believe me, they're delicious. And easy to make. (I created some beehive cookies, based on this same idea, back in September for my Bea's birthday.)

Make your own little forest of sugar spruces for a holiday table or cookie exchange. The recipe and assembly instructions are available at SheKnows. 

I think they'd be super-cute, packaged in individual clear boxes or tubes, with a tiny snowdrift of sugar on the bottom. Hummm... maybe I need to get back into the kitchen and explore that idea for my office gift exchange?