In December my husband and I were decorating Christmas Cookies and I remarked, "This isn't fun anymore." Then we reminisced about so many Christmas's past, when we had family over for baking cookies all day or when Tommy and Katie were decorating along side us. This year was different for so many reasons. We're older, the kids are older, Katie can't eat cookies any longer, and then there's COVID 19. Dad is gone now and he had such an insatiable sweet tooth.
But there were other things about decorating cookies that bothered me. First of all I didn't like the cutout dough by itself. I've tried many recipes over the thirty- plus years. Sometimes I thought I'd found the perfect recipe but eventually looked for another. Some dough would lose its shape and you had no idea if it was a stocking or angel. And the process was so time consuming. Mix. Divide and wrap. Refrigerate and wait. Roll. Cut. Bake. Decorate.
Don't even get me started on trying to ice and decorate. Making all those batches of icing, dividing and coloring, trying to pour it into plastic bottles and squeezing until my hands hurt! And it was so darned sweet that I really didn't like to eat the cookies!
So, I decided that I would make cutouts each month of the new year, trying new recipes of dough and icing. I searched the internet and discovered so many new things and found a simple cutout dough that you just mix, roll, cut and bake! I also learned that I should use decorating bags and tips instead of bottles.
The Winter Theme Results:
I love this dough but it's too salty even though I used unsalted butter. Note to self, my neighbor, Joyce, suggested that I use Land 'O Lakes brand because the unsalted is "more reliable". The cookies held the shape even though they puffed while baking.
I found and studied photos of decorated mittens and hats online that looked pretty easy.
However, squeezing the bags of icing while "decorating" was nearly impossible and my hands hurt so badly that sticking them in warm dishwater was soothing. It also took hours to bake and decorate the batch.
Back to the drawing board!
