Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Baseball Cookies !

Sadly, I was not able to participate in the Daring Baker's challenge this month. So I thought I'd post on a different kind of baker's challenge instead. To mark the end of our Little League season this year, I created a baseball cookie for each of the kids on my son's team.

I used this great recipe that I found for cut out cookies: No Fail Sugar Cookies, which originally came from Kitchengifts.com. I made giant five-inch diameter cookies- using a tupperware bowl as my cut-out tool. I use KitchenGift's tip for rolling out dough without the mess: Rather than wait for your cookie dough to chill, take the freshly made dough and place a glob between two sheets of parchment paper. Roll it out to the desired thickness, then place the dough and paper on a cookie sheet and pop it into the refrigerator. Continue rolling out your dough between sheets of paper until you have used it all. By the time you are finished, the first batch will be completely chilled and ready to cut. Reroll leftover dough and repeat the process. Add added bonus is that you are not adding any additional flour to your cookies. This process works WONDERFULLY!

Martha Stewart's Royal Icing works really well for decorator cookies. I made the whole batch and then divided it up into 3 tupperware bowls. Place the lids on each until ready to use or they'll begin to harden. With icing tub #1, I piped all of the edges on first and let those dry a little bit. Then I thinned out icing tub #1 slightly and used it to flood the centers. If you give it enough time, it hardens nicely.

To make nice, even arcs for the stitching on the baseball, I used the edge of the same tupperware that I used to cut out the cookies to make impressions.

With icing tub #2, I mixed in 1 bottle of red food coloring to get a nice dark red color. If you use too little, you'll end up with magenta stitches. Boys don't like magenta. Then I piped red icing into the impressions, and also added the stitches.

Icing tub #3 was mixed with blue food coloring. Each cookie was personalized with a name and a number.

I made nice, thick 5-inch cookies... and I ended up with about 18. It's nice to have a couple extra ones because it's inevitable that one of them will get messed up at some point during the decorating process.

If you've got 24 hours to let these dry completely, you'll end up with icing that hardens nicely. I was in a bit of a rush, so I used a table fan to dry them today (and that worked just fine too.) Each cookie was slipped into its own quart-sized baggie and they were good to go.

The final game was a tie (happy kids all around!) The boys loved their cookies. And they especially enjoyed the fact that they were personalized. The moms and dads who snuck bites from their kid's cookies noted how delicious they were. And many of the parents asked me where I purchased the cookies :)

The cookie recipe can be found HERE.
The royal icing recipe can be found HERE.

42 comments:

  1. Too bad you weren't able to do the opera this month. What adorable cookies though!!

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  2. What a wonderful mom you are! I bet your kids are so proud of what a wonderful baker their mom is!

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  3. How adorable are those cookies!!!! Mom of the year!!

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  4. These are so cute! And the step by step instructions are wonderful!

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  5. Now that is a challenge! And the players must have been proud to have their own cookie!

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  6. you possess some unbelievably steady and strong hands--the cookies are perfect. :)

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  7. I love this idea! Our last game is on June 14th... so, maybe I can get my act together and try to make these for my son's team. I know they'd love them! I love that you shared all the steps to making them, too!

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  8. My wife has done gingerbread men as place cards for family dinners and once presented my surgeon with gingerbread men in scrub suits along with sugar cookie hands. He was operating on my hand.

    She did request that they refrain from getting crumbs in the incission.

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  9. You are too cute! I wish our boys were on a team together.... My goodness! I bet they loved how you personalized each cookie for them. I'm such a bad mom, I would have eaten my son's.... Is that so wrong? Great job & sorry you missed the DB challenge - tough time of the year.

    xoxox Amy

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  10. Beautiful! I love sugar cookies and icing... thanks for the links to the recipes. Can't wait to try it out!

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  11. Wow! How cute are these? I bet the they went down a storm - great idea!!

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  12. Really lovely!!! What you think if I make the football cookies???? Gerardo Jr. is a football fanatic!!But these look wonderful!!! xxGloria

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  13. You're such a cute mom! I'm sure the team loved them. I wouldn't want to eat mine!

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  14. My son plays for the Angels in our League too! I love these and now plan to make them for his party. Thanks for the inspiration!

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  15. You're just like Martha Stewart! Seriously. If I made these, they would look bad, because I would mess them up.
    These cookies are so cute!

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  16. Those are adorable! How funny that they thought you bought them!

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  17. What a labor of love! I'm not surprised they thought you bought them...they look incredible!

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  18. Hi Recipe Girl,

    My name is Shannon and I'm the editorial assistant at Foodbuzz.com. I am very impressed with the quality of your posts and to that end, I’d like to invite you to be a part of our newly launched Foodbuzz Featured Publisher program. I would love to send you more details about the program, so if you are interested, please email me at Shannon@foodbuzz.com.


    Cheers!

    Shannon Eliot
    Editorial Assistant, Foodbuzz.com
    shannon@foodbuzz.com

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  19. These are too cute!! I am saving this for one day when I have kids. I know I won't have a son in little league for years, but these are too cute NOT to remember!!

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  20. Nice job, so cute! I love how you made the impresion with the edge of the bowl, brilliant! I say that because I once made baseball cookies and freeformed it, and they all looked so different and kind of lame. Yours looks so professional!

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  21. I would've asked you where you purchased these cookies too! They look great! :) Your son must be so happy to have you as a mom :D!

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  22. Lucky little guys! I love the tip for using the tupperware to make the stitch lines perfect. I should have done that when I was piping my little girl's tennis ball candies.

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  23. These are perfect! I have to bring the snack for the last game party on Saturday so now I will be making these!!!!! Thank you, thank you!

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  24. too cute RecipeGirl

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  25. Those look great Lori! So professional looking! I'll bet the boys on the team think you're the coolest Mom around :-)
    Val

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  26. WOW oh WOW what delighful cookies!! Your icing skills are fantastic and what a great mom you are!! :)

    Rosie x

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  27. These are too adorable! How DO you find the time????? You are an artist as well as a chef.

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  28. Cute looking cookies! I would say too cute to eat:)

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  29. Ahh, so sorry you missed this month's DBC - I know that your opera cake would have been a gorgeous sight to see!! But hey, your baseball sugar cookies are stunning; and hooray for happy little baseball players!! No doubt they'd love those cookies :0)

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  30. God, what a great job; I can only imagine the reaction of the boys!

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  31. You should be voted "Mom of the Year". Very cute and original.

    Mark

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  32. Totally adorable! I'll have to make these during my little guy's next baseball season. Really cute!

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  33. Those cookies look wonderful! I bet those went over very well

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  34. You are the coolest mom! What a delightful idea; I'm sure the kiddies loved them.

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  35. Hi... would you like to adpot me? :D
    Haha... the cookies look awesome! I only have the patience to decorate cookies in Christmas... the rest of the year is mainly plain cookies and if you cought me in a good mood you might get sprinkles, but that's as good as it gets! Great job... and thanks for sharing the rolling tip. I'll have in mind... for Christmas time XD

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  36. Those cookies are AMAZING! Your piping skills...wow. Very well done. (and they were probably a lot more fun than that opera cake).

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  37. Those cookies look great! My son is about to turn 10 and have a b-day bash playing baseball with all his friends. I was just thinking that I hadn't thought about goodies yet. Hmmm.

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  38. What a great idea for cookies! Next time I head out to the ball game, I will definitely make these to take along!

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  39. Quite possibly the cutest cookies ever.
    First time I visited you- I'll be back!
    And I linked you on my food blog- hope that's ok.

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