Painted Easter Sugar Cookies

We've been making Easter Cookies this week. We made my Amazing Marvelous Marbled Easter Egg Cookies and now we made these Painted Easter Cookies. The process of making sugar cookies is fun with mixing the dough, rolling out, and cutting the cookies so this is always a hit with kids.  Just add in "painting the cookies" as a last step and you have a winner on your hands. We made painted sugar cookies for Christmas here too.

Materials Needed:

Rolled and cut out sugar cookies on a cookie sheet (Uncooked)

Recipe here for Sugar Cookies
Evaporated Milk (from a can)

Food Coloring

Toothpicks

ice cube tray or small containers

paint brushes that have only been used for food

To make these lovely painted cookies, first make the sugar cookies and have the uncooked cookies placed on a cookie sheet. Prepare the cookie paint by filling an ice cube tray with evaporated milk. Then, add a few drops of food coloring per each ice cube section.  Mix up the food coloring with the evaporated milk with a toothpick. Now, grab your paint brushes and you are ready to paint the cookies.

After the cookies are painted, you can cook them according to the sugar cookie recipe that you choose to follow.  They look gorgeous uncooked!

And they stay beautiful after they have been baked too.  The nice thing about this process is that once the cookies are cooled they are ready to eat.  There is no extra step to make frosting and wait for the cookies to cool!

Happy Cookie Making and Happy Easter!

Sweet Little Heart Cookies

We've made this recipe the past few years from Family Fun Magazine as Santa Hats, but since we forgot to make them for Christmas I told my daughter we could make a heart version of these for a Valentine Heart Cookie. They are basically a Meringue Cookie made with egg whites and sugar. Here is how they turned out:

Ingredients Needed:
2 egg whites, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar
Red colored sugar
parchment paper

First heat the oven to 200 degrees F.  Then beat the egg whites until soft peaks form.  After that, add the cream of tartar, vanilla extract, and 1/2 sugar. Continue to beat until peaks stiffen.  Then we put the mixture into a gallon size plastic bag and cut a corner off the bag for a makeshift piping bag.

Then on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet, pipe the hearts with the bag filled with the egg white mixture.

Next, fill the inside of the heart like this.

Here is C hard at work in the process.

Lastly, sprinkle the colored sugar on the hearts and cook for 1 hour and 20 minutes at 200 degrees F. Cook them until they are hard, but not browned. The recipe advised to turn off the oven and let the cookies sit for an hour before removing. ***We took them right out and they were fine.

My daughter loves these sweet cookies and we already need to make some more!

Chocolate Sugar Cookie Hearts

Happy Valentine's Day! I've enjoyed sharing all our Valentine/Heart ideas the past few weeks!  We've been very busy the past fews day preparing for the big day! Mostly we've been working on making edible treats to share with friends, family, and neighbors.  Yesterday we made these wonderful Chocolate Sugar Cookie Hearts!  They are identical to our  Chocolate Christmas Sugar Cookies except for the shape and color of them! We followed the recipe here at Myrecipes.com !  We also made our Super Easy Chocolate Covered Strawberries from last year! (My absolute FAVORITE for Valentine's Day) Hope you have wonderful Valentine's Day and may it be the beginning of Loving of all those around you!  A simple smile to a stranger might be the best Valentine gift you give!!!

"Not all of us can do great things.  But we can do small things with great love." -Mother Teresa

"I have witnessed the softening of the hardest of hearts by a simple smile."  -Goldie Hawn

YUMMY!

Super Easy Chocolate Covered Strawberries

What Valentine gifts did you make?

Give a smile today to those around you!

Painted Christmas Sugar Cookies

Have you ever painted on cookies before? We had so much FUN doing this and it was such a nice change of pace compared to the usual sprinkles and frosting decor! It is so unbelievably easy to do and has beautiful results...as you can see here.  Painting on cookies is a great way for kids to take ownership of their cookie creations!!! Keep reading to find out how we did this!

First we made the sugar cookies and cut out the shapes.  Cassie never tires of this...it is the third or fourth time we've done this so far this holiday season! Here is a great recipe for Sugar cookies here just in case you don't have one.

For the paint we used evaporated milk and food coloring.  I just filled an ice cube tray with evaporated milk in each section and then put a few drops of food coloring.  I mixed them together with a toothpick.
We used a new paint brush that never touched real paint for the decorating.

After mixing up the paints, we painted directly on the uncooked cookies.  C and I had a wonderful afternoon painting cookies.  She was so proud of herself!  We felt like "Cookie Artists" creating little paintings on dough.  Fun, fun, fun!  Can you believe I've never done this before?  I  absolutely LOVED doing this and plan to do it for other holiday sugar cookies!

Here is how some of them look before they are cooked.  Sorry about the glare of the foil in this picture!

Here are some finished cookies all ready to eat!  I love the shiny look they have, and of course they are delicious too!  The center cookie of C's traced hand looks a little like a Halloween cookie with those green fingernails!!! What do you think?

Gosh... we've done a lot of baking for this holiday season.  Be sure to check out our Cocoa Press Christmas Tree Cookies, Chocolate Christmas Sugar Cookies,  So Easy Peppermint Bark, and more that I haven't posted!

Do you have all your Holiday baking finished?

This post is linked to: Made By You Monday, It's Playtime

Chocolate Christmas Sugar Cookies

Everyone always makes the old stand-by for Christmas:  "Sugar Cookies",  and I thought to myself, "I want to make Chocolate ones!"  So, since we are chocoholics here at The Chocolate Muffin Tree, I searched for a recipe (there are not too may of them out there!!) and found a wonderful recipe at Myrecipes.com here for Chocolate Sugar Cookies! Yum! Here are some of our beautiful cookies. Here are some with just sprinkles. They are pictured with are So Easy Peppermint Bark that we made!

The recipe makes a less sweet chocolate cookie, but with added sprinkles or frosting the taste is perfect!

Here are some with frosting and sprinkles.  I made a frosting recipe that is shiny when it dries!! Here is the recipe for the frosting:

1 1/3 cups powdered sugar

2 teaspoons of Corn Syrup

1 Tablespoon of milk (I added a little more)

few drops of vanilla

food color

Beat with a hand mixer until smooth.

Cassie had a lot FUN making them! Make sure to put the sprinkles on before baking.  If you are making the frosting kind, frost after baked and then put on the sprinkles!!!

More Chocolate recipes are on there way....stay tuned!

Have you ever made Chocolate Sugar Cookies?

What kinds of Chocolate Cookies do you make?

Cocoa Press Christmas Tree Cookies

Don't these look delicious?  These have become a tradition every Holiday Season!!! I think I have made them with C every year since she was born.  Most cookie makers are familiar with the plain butter or cream cheese version of these press cookies,  but we have fallen in love with the Chocolate version!
Of course, chocolate wins over since we are The Chocolate Muffin Tree!  Once you try these you'll never go back to the non-chocolate kind! If you want to make these you'll need these ingredients:

! cup butter (softened)

2/3 cup of sugar

1 egg

1tsp. vanilla 

2 1/4 cup flour

1/3 cup baking cocoa (we used hershey's)

1/2 tsp. salt

Cream butter, sugar, egg, and vanilla in large mixer bowl.  Combine flour, cocoa, and salt; blend in.  

Now you'll need a Cookie Press. This one below is my Grandma's from a long time ago!  They make them with a squeeze handle now and some are even electric.  My Mom had an electric one,  but she always liked this one! With this particular Cookie press you have to turn the black handle instead of squeezing.  You can buy a  cookie press here. You fill the back of the press with the cookie dough.

You can see the cookie dough comes out the tree shape here. There are other shapes, but the tree shape works the best for me so I don't fuss with the others.

You press the cookies onto a cool ungreased cookie sheet.  There is a trick with the pace you use so the cookies turn out.  Once you get the hang of it,  you'll know what works!  After you have the cookie sheet full,  then you can decorate with sprinkles!  Bake at 350 for 5 to 7 minutes.

Cool cookies on a wire rack.  The recipe makes 4 to 5 dozen cookies.  I love these cookies because they are the perfect size for small hands.  These are the type of cookie you don't feel guilty about when you eat 4 or 5 since they are small!  I know you'll enjoy these simple chocolate cookies!

What are your Favorite Holiday Cookies?