Newport Harbor Baseball Cookies

This past week I had the opportunity to make some baseball sugar cookies for my friend, Stacy. I work with her, and her son plays on the Newport Harbor baseball team. Stacy was hosting the team dinner before the game this week and asked if I'd make some cookies for dessert. I was more than happy to help her out, and since I had already made baseball cookies once before, I was excited to improve them. She wanted a bigger cookie, I used Ateco 3.5 inch round cutter, so I thought I'd dress them up with a little blue anchor in between the laces, Newport Harbors logo.

It always seems that when I know I'm making sugar cookies I plan out in my head what days I'm going to do what so I don't end up making the dough, baking the cookies, making all the frosting and frosting them all in the same day. On Tuesday night I decided that I was going to make the anchors piped on wax paper like I did these, because it worked out so well last time. I also thought this to be a time saver, as I wouldn't have to wait as long for the frosting to dry before applying them. Well, I must have had some beginners luck with those O's, because I couldn't get one anchor off the wax paper without them breaking. There goes my plan ahead plan. So Wednesday night I bribed my sisters with dinner to have them come help me assess what the problem was. Turns out the process was fine, I had just made the anchors too thin. Brittany actually ended up piping the new, thicker, anchors while I piped the outline and Mikken filled in the centers.

After the white frosting had dried a bit, I piped on the red laces. The next morning I got up early and applied the anchors, which peeled off perfectly. I just used a small paint brush and applied a small amount of water to the cookie where the anchor would go.

Anchor crisis aside, I think they turned out cute. I hope the team liked them! Thanks again Stacy!

Vintage Baseball Party: Favors

All summer long I have been trying to perfect my sugar cookie and decorating skills. So for Brian's party I decided to make baseball and bat cookies as party favors. I put them in the cellophane bags, but since he's not really a ribbon kind of guy, I made a thank you tag out of paper and stapled it to the top. I loved them. Plus they tasted and looked great too.


Before I started this cookie project I searched the internet for ideas and tips on how to make this a little easier. Best tip I found, hands down, was to roll out your dough, while still soft, between two pieces of parchment paper. It makes no sense to refrigerate your dough until hard, and then try to roll out this huge lump of dough. Which actually won't roll out until it softens up again, but by then it's too soft to to actually cut out the cookies. (Which is exactly what happened when I tried to make the wedding cake cookies.) I also bought some Evendough bands to put on the end of my rolling pin so that my dough would roll out evenly. Using these was so much easier than just eyeballing it myself. And since the dough was soft, I just applied a lot of pressure and the dough rolled out evenly. And without having to cover my counter with countless cups of flour, this system made it so much cleaner too!




I would roll out multiple sheets of dough and put them in the freezer. Within 20-30 minutes they were hard enough to cut out. Peal back the top sheet of parchment paper, dip your cookie cutter in flour and cut away. The colder the dough, the crisper the edges of your cookies will come out. Any left over scraps easily mix into each other because they don't have the excess flour on them. This was, seriously, the best system. Easier, faster, cleaner! I could make cookies all day at this rate.

My Dad happened to be in town again and was more than happy to help me with the cookies. He took the bats, while I had to pipe perfect circles around the baseballs. Not an easy task. I found that if you hold the piping bag a few inches above the cookies you actually have a better chance of getting the frosting where you want it to go. If you look closely, my circles are far from perfect. But once we put on the baseball stitching you could hardly tell.






For great video how tos on making royal icing, outlining and flooding sugar cookies visit www.universityofcookie.com I found them super helpful, and it's nice to watch someone on video!