Sometimes love sneaks up on you and sometimes love flies from you like a really freaked out bird who is wondering why the heck you keep walking behind it. And to be fair, you really had no reason to be following a bird around a field, that’s kind of their space, so please stay to the path, thank you very much and leave that freaken’ bird alone! What I mean to say is, some people find their special someone and are happy and write blog posts about their darling husband who brings home vintage cookie cutters displayed in a driftwood display case he whipped up because he knows how much you love to “cut up cookies.” Awww, guys, he doesn’t even understand how cookies are made! but he loves me so much and just wants to support me in what I love! So that’s some people. Please find another blog to subscribe to if that’s your thing. Here you will only find the bloody stump of a heart that has been ripped out, stomped on, rubbed against a micro-planer and repaired not through the love of a good man, but through an obsession with baking.
On that note, welcome to the broken hearts club, a few days of blogs devoted to the love of all the sweet things that get us through when the rest of your life isn’t going that sweet. Or, all the recipes to celebrate how sweet your life is! It works both ways!
Sugar cookie dough dyed with gel food coloring during the last bit of mixing (before rolling out and refrigerating for a couple hours) can be a simple way to make sugar cookies shine without the need to make royal icing- which a lot of people don’t even like the taste of! Once you have your base colors, the options for cutting out and mixing and matching are endless! Cutting out strips of each color and then rolling them out together gives a kind of rainbow effect, and pieces can be cut out and filled in with other colors for complex patterns that are actually easy peasy! I would do at least three colors for some fun, but even two contrasting colors can provide a lot of scope for cool designs. Try a chevron pattern instead of stripes, cut out repeating tiny hearts, find new color stories! The possibilities are endless, just like love…for some people!
Special steps:
- Mix up your sugar cookie dough
- Divide and add your coloring and beat in mixer until the dye is spread throughout. Red works really well, especially AmeriColor Super Red.
- Go for an ombre look by adding more and more dye to the divided dough, but all of the same color.
- Rollout your colors, cut strips and then arrange the stripes of different colors to make a new pattern. Roll this out to seal off the seams between the colors.
- Cut out cookies from one color can be placed in holes of other colors for a sweet pattern.
- Think seasonally- reds and purples for valentines, greens for St. Patrick’s day, pastels for Easter, for color pallet inspiration!
alton brown's sugar cookie
Ingredients
- 3 c flour
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 c butter softened
- 1 c sugar
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1 tbs milk
- powdered sugar for rolling out dough, or flour
Instructions
- sift together flour, baking powder and salt, set aside
- with stand mixer, beat sugar and butter until light and fluffy
- add egg and milk and combine
- add in flour, mixing on low. beat until mixture pulls from side of bowl
- make 2 disks of dough, place in plastic bag and put in fridge for at least 2 hours (longer is better, so egg protein has a chance to spread)
- pre heat oven to 375
- powder rolling surface or parchment paper with powdered sugar and roll out dough about 1/4'' thick. you can either pull dough away from cutter and leave shape on parchment paper or transfer the shape to another sheet of parchment paper using a spachula.
- place parchment paper on cookie sheet and bake for 9-11 mintues
1 thought on “blushing sugar cookies”
Super cute cookies, Talia! I can relate to the feeling of heartbreak that you describe soooo well… I think we can all relate, unfortunately. My heart has been smashed to bits on more than one occasion. But cookies do make things a little bit better. I agree with you there. Bake on!