Valentine's Day Cookies

You are my Love bug

I loved the muah cookies so much that I went ahead and made a whole bunch of Valentine's Day Cookies that are on sale via my baking outfit - The Dessert Island. The response to my V-day cookies were so great that I thought why not share them here as well? As always, my designs are simple are something that anyone with an eye for cookie decorating can attempt. I always prefer cheeky and fun V'day cookies/msg's than the sappy ones, so my cookies reflect that, barring a few :) No tutorial this time on these, since this is a just drool post. But I do hope to get your feedback on them. 

So here goes, the one you see on the top is aptly titled you are my love bug and they remind me of the love bug/lady bird cupcakes I had made and shared on my blog a year ago. You can see that post here..

The next on the list is one that is my fav and I call him Mr Lova Lova. The Casanova of the pack, you can't resist falling in love with him... Perfect for those who want to take him home or to gift to your special someone... Side effects include swooning and Shaggy's song playing in your head on repeat. Say it with me, Mr lova lova ♪ ♫ ♩...

Mr Lova Lova

The next one was inspired by one of my favorite songs while growing up. "Though we gotta say goodbye for the summer, but darling I promise you this, I'll send you all my love, everyday in a letter, sealed with a kiss..." 

Muah cookies

Care for a kiss?

Long time no see and yes, it's all my fault. One of these days I'm gonna give myself a shelling over how I've been so irregular with my blog. For those of you who are still around, I am coming up with a project on the blog that will have me blogging more regularly and more importantly, share with you'll some great recipes/designs. So stay tuned and once again, I am so sorry for the long absence. I only hope the adage absence makes the heart fonder applies here :p  But for now, I am making up for that with a step by step tutorial of a cookie design that I fell in love with the minute I saw it. Valentine's Day is around the corner and I don't know about you, but I like cheeky ones rather than sappy valentines and this one has cheeky 'smacked' all over it. It's such a simple design that even someone with no cookie decorating experience can do it with ease and that's why this is the first tutorial of the year. Simple and fabulous, this one's a keeper and I take no credit to the design. Sweetambs is the original creator of this design (as far as I know) and I followed suit and I hope you do too.. 

For this project you'll need - 

• Cookie dough (You can use shortbread or sugar cookie dough for this). Here are some popular links for both - here and here. 
• A heart shaped cookie cutter.
• Or go and buy a ready-made heart shaped cookie  if you are feeling lazy and use that.
• Royal icing (in flood consistency/ten second consistency) - you can find my recipe and details here.
• Red food colour (gel or powder based).
• A toothpick, scribe tool or a long blunt needle.
• Piping bags/parchment piping cones or just a ziplock.

Spooks in a teacup

Spooks in a teacup

I'm going all out on Halloween cookies. Yes, we don't celebrate Halloween in India, but when you get a chance to make cute lil monster cookies, you take it. I chanced upon this idea long back from a picture I had saved some time ago. But not wanting to just give credit to an unknown picture, I dug deeper as I wanted to credit the idea to the rightful owner and after trawling around, I found her. The inspiration behind these cuties is from Meaghan Mountford and her delightful blog - The Decorated Cookie. If you haven't heard of her, head over to her blog by clicking on the link above and go ogle at her creations like I do. But wait, only on one condition. That you come back to my post. My family of spooks in a tea cup need your tender loving care :)

Spooks in a row

These cookie sticks are so easy that you could do them as a last minute Halloween idea. Just be prepared for family to just stare at them and not want to eat them. I know Halloween is supposed to be filled with scary monsters but try as I might, I cant get these to look scary. They look better looking as cute as a button. And if that weren't enough, I made them their very own family. Mamma spook, Pappa spook and two little spooklings who say Boo in unison. Ok, now before I die of cute overload, 

Here's what you will need:

•  Cookie dough (You can use shortbread or sugar cookie dough for this). Here's a link to a good shortbread cookie recipe
• Royal icing and Royal icing candy eyes. You can find my recipe for both here 
• Food colouring of your choice
• Piping bags
• Candy flowers (optional)

Method:

Prepping mummy spook

• Roll out your cookie dough and cut out strips of cookie, approximately 4 inches long and half to 3/4th inch wide.
• Chill them for about ten minutes in the fridge.
• Bake the cookies at 180 C for about ten minutes till the sides are slightly browned.
• Once the cookies are cool, put some royal icing in your piping bag, snip off the end and pipe random squiggles for the mummy cookie. Refer to the pic on the right for instructions. You basically pipe diagonal lines all the way down and then the opposite side. Once that's done, drop in two candy eyes and leave to dry. Viola, you have your mummy cookie.
• For the Dotted daddy, drop in thick dots of icing in any random pattern in your choice of colour and drop in two eyes on the top and leave to dry.
• For the swirly baby, again, pipe swirls, going from the right to left or vice versa. Drop in eyes and leave to dry. Add candy flowers to some if you want to, or leave them as they are.

The family that spooks together sticks together

You can experiment with different colours and designs. Let me tell you an little secret. Spook cookies are messy little things, so this is something even someone with no cookie decorating experience can do. The messier the better, it adds more character to your cookies. So put on your baking gloves and bake and decorate these 'boo'tiful cookies.

Happy Halloween in advance to you'll and go ahead, Get, Set, Bake!...

Baby shower cookies

Baby carriage cookies

Lately, I've begin to love making itty bitty cookies and more so, baby shower cookies. The lil onesies, the baby pram and the cute as a teacup baby bottles, they invoke an aww from just about anybody, guys included. So here are a few simple designs for baby shower cookies. 

Hand-cut baby bottle cookies

Inspirations are countless, from catalogues, to pictures of onesies, to the hundreds of pictures available online. I tend to keep it simple, so if you want to start off with baby shower cookie designs, these are perfect for you.

What you will need: 

Polka dotted onesies

• A sugar cookie in the shape of baby shower themes. Use any sugar cookie recipe and use baby shower cutters to cut out the desired shape and bake them.
• Royal icing. You can find the recipe from my previous posts here.
• Piping bags and tips or ziplock bags.

Method:

• Separate your icing into different bowls, according to the number of colours you need and mix in the colours accordingly. Keep a larger amount for the base colours and slightly lesser for the colours that you will outline the cookies with.
• Start off with a base coat of icing in the colour of your choice. Flood the entire cookie and let it dry. if you want to add polka dots that don't stand out, like in the polka dotted onesies pic, add the dots in another colour before this dries.
• Once it's dry, use a #1 tip with your piping bag or snip off the end of a zip lock into a tiny hole and pipe out outlines, following the edges of the cookie.
• Add a few dots and zig zags along the way to add to the design. Be creative here and try your hand at different patterns. Don't worry, if you don't like what you made, save it to gobble up later and try again.  
• That's it, that's how simple they can be. Leaving you with a few pictures of what I have done to inspire you to start cookie'n. 

Baby bottles

Baby onesies

Packed and ready to go to an expecting mommy

So what are you waiting for, Get, Set, Bake!! 

Choconana cookies (eggless)

Choconana crinkle cookies

I've been a very bad girl. Its been a very long time since I updated the blog and that's not good at all. So much so that hubby dearest lately came up to me and said, "Why aren't you updating your blog?"

If the busy bee like him has noticed, then I have really really been a slacker. I think I just got caught up with everything else and more often than not, only updated my FB page . Since having a page was new to me, it took all my attention, but that's no excuse. I hope to be more active on my dear blog, the one that started my baking journey. So here I am, back to blogging with a recipe from a fellow blogger (Cheryl, the super talented blogger at Kitchen kemistry) and friend who I look up to for her culinary knowledge and awesome recipes.  This recipe, like most of her recipes, is a keeper. Its an eggless chocolate banana cookie that is made out of atta (whole wheat flour). Now I have only used atta for making chapatis other than this one time I accidentally used atta instead of maida (all purpose flour) for a cake and I kept wondering why the batter looked funny till I realised what I had done, thankfully, before baking the cake. More on that blunder later, but coming back to this recipe, one would think, atta cookies, but they won't taste so good. But trust me, anyone who has had this cookie did a double take when I told them it had atta, not flour in it as it tastes so yum.  Now, those who follow my blog know that I do not like bananas, but this one, I love. It has an oh so subtle taste of bananas that contrast beautifully against the dark rich chocolate that makes you go yum. 
So without further ado, here's the recipe.

Choconana crinkle cookies

(Makes about 20 cookies)

You can find the original recipe and more awesome recipes here 

Ingredients

Dry ingredients:

• 1 cup + 2 tbsp atta (or whole wheat flour as you might call it).
• 1 tsp baking powder
• A pinch of salt

Wet ingredients:

• 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp sugar. (I used brown sugar to add to the moreish taste of these cookies, but you can use caster sugar as well)
• 1/4 cup plus 1 tbsp oil. (Any neutral flavoured oil will do)
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder ( the darker and richer, the better, especially for pronounced crinkles, taste aside)
• 1/2 cup banana puree. (Make sure to use ripe bananas and if you want to save time and not puree them, mash them really really well).
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

You will also need a bowl of icing sugar to coat the cookies in for the crinkle effect

Method

• Give the dry ingredients a quick whisk
• Mix/whisk the wet ingredients together. You can use an electric mixer, but I did it by hand and it works just fine. Just make sure to not over mix as that will lead to dense cookies.
• Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and combine with a spatula. It might look runny, but it will come together.
• Cover the ‘dough’ mixture with cling film and refrigerate overnight or for a couple of hours if you don’t wanna wait that long.
• When you are ready to make the cookies, preheat your oven to 170 C and using a melon baller or a tiny scoop, take out even sizes of dough balls and roll them between your palms to make even shaped balls and place them on your baking tray that has been lined with parchment paper. They will expand slightly, so leave a gap between each cookie.
• Take each ball and roll in icing sugar till completely coated.  Ensure that no chocolate bits are seen through the icing sugar coating. Double roll if necessary.
• Bake the cookies for about 15 minutes. As they heat they will crack, exposing  the chocolate interior, making them crinkle cookies.
• I personally prefer them hot from the oven, but you can cool them and store them in an airtight container.
• So what are you waiting for? Get, Set, Bake!