Whenever something on this blog involves crafting or baking, y’all can just go ahead and assume it started with a pin (on Pinterest, of course). In this case, the pin was an image of scissors slicing little balls of dough. I think the presumption was that it would then fan out nicely into an amazingly designed cookie, making the chef look talented and skillful. Sounds good.
So…. I clicked on the pin and it went to nowhere. At least nowhere helpful. I gotta figure this one out on my own.
First, the sugar cookie recipe. I didn’t have a pre-made version, so it had to be from scratch. The one I got was from here: Easy Sugar Cookies. They had me at “easy.” The recipe makes some crunchy cookies, which I happen to like. But, if crunchy cookies ain’t yo thing, then pick another base recipe.
After the dough is made, I rolled it into round tablespoon-ish sized balls, and placed on parchment to await their glitter bath.
In the pinned picture, the balls where all rolled in sparkly sprinkles. Had those, so I figured, why not? Apparently, mine were leftover from a baby shower (pink and blue) so that’s what I used. If you have other colors, I’m pretty sure they’ll come out OK, or you could just skip this step entirely*! But, if you do it this way, roll the balls in the sugar sprinkles and return them to their home on the parchment.
This is where it got a little tricky. The photo on Pinterest made it look like the balls of dough were effortlessly cut and then splayed out into the perfect flower**. Yeah, not so much. It wasn’t quite so “clean.” I cut the balls in half, then halved the halves, sometimes making another petal if they were grossly miss-sized or miss-shaped. There was a lot of mushing involved and tweaking of “petals,” but I figured nothing a little cooking in the oven wouldn’t fix.
Which brings us to the next stage: Baking. Put your cookies in the oven for your recipe’s allotted time. Once done, immediately plunge your candy of choice (mine was a gum drop) in the center of the flower.
Allow the cookies to cool to room temp, then ice them if you so desire.
If you ask me, there’s nothing worse than getting a little pin-spiration, then not finding the source. My solution may not be the best thing you’ve ever seen, but ehh… what I lack in refinement I make up for in effort. And the toddler crowd has a pretty low-standard when it comes to cookies.
*Retrospectively, I think you could ditch the glitter sprinkle stage. The way they are cut, the glitter is on the bottom. It’d probably be easier and more effective to glitter them after slicing. Hey, 20-20 hindsight, right?
**It did occur to me mid-way through slicing the cookie balls that I could have just used a darn cookie cutter. And while tempting, I think the unique-ness of each cookie is kinda cool. But that’s just me trying to rationalize the time I spent on these cookies! 🙂
A mouth watering delite for the readers. A must read for the readers to help them get a taste of the delicacy.
The reason your dough was hard to work with while cutting may have been that your dough was too warm. If you try it again, try making your balls then freezing them for about 20-30 minutes then cut them with really sharp scissors. 🙂
I bet that would help! Thanks for the advice. I love to cook, but baking isn’t my forte! 🙂