Gnomes and toadstools

For munchie's birthday I really wanted to make some sugar cookie cutouts. I found a set of cookie cutters on ebay in the shape of gnomes and toadstools and thought it would be perfect to go along with our theme. In case you don't already know, I kind of have this thing about metal cookie cutters. I really and I do mean really love them. Sure the plastic ones are fine with the kiddos but honestly, I think no baker's pantry is complete without a good bunch of metal ones.

So here they are the finished products: 

 Here is a close up of my gnomes just after I finished flooding them:

I don't think they turned out too terribly bad seeing as I have never decorated a sugar cookie like this ever. I have only decorated them with a big slab of frosting, sprinkled some colored sugar on them and ate them up. I did learn a few things though and I will add my tips so that you can keep from making the same mistakes that I did.

I found my recipe for the sugar cookies on another blog that I follow as I didn't have a good one for cutouts of my own. These were really tasty and I don't think I will look any further for another cutout recipe.You can also find a really nice tutorial on how to decorate your cookies here: clicky

Ella’s White Sugar Cookies adapted from Annie's Eats
Ingredients:
1 cup butter
1 cup powdered sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 ½ t. almond extract
1 t. vanilla (I added 2 tsp as I am more a fan of the vanilla taste than the almond)
1 t. salt
2 ½ c. sifted flour
Directions:
Cream butter. Add powdered sugar. Blend in egg, almond extract, vanilla, salt and flour. Chill dough until firm. Roll to ¼” thickness on well-floured surface. Cut with cookie cutters. Place on greased cookie sheets. Bake at 375° for 8-10 min. Cookies should not brown. Frost and decorate when cool. Yields ~40 cookies.

Royal Icing courtesy of Wilton

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons meringue powder
4 cups (about 1 lb) confectioner's sugar
6 tablespoons warm water

Beat all ingredients until icing forms peaks (7-10 minutes at low speed with a heavy-duty mixer, 10-12 minutes at high speed with a hand-held mixer).

Makes about 3 cups of icing.

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Here are a few things I will do differently next time:

--I won't add too much water. I added too much to the icing I was going to use to flood the cookies and it came out a lot thinner than I would have liked once it was on the cookies. So you can see it is very flat and shiny.
--I won't use Wilton colors for red or black. I really like the Wilton gel food coloring but I needed an entire container of color and still couldn't get the right shade of red or black. It was very matte and almost pastel like in nature. It just did not have that pop of bright that I was looking for. Upon further research I have learned that for red and black you should use Americolor gels in super red and super black. Now I know and I will be adding these to my list of things to get before my next cookie baking session.
--These were pretty time consuming so I would say if you are doing really big batches, carve yourself out an entire day to make these. I made the cookies a couple of days ahead, stored them in an airtight container and then decorated the night prior to the party. If done differently, I would have decorated a day earlier and given myself more time to let everything dry before flooding. I gave myself an hour, but definitely could have used several more between piping and flooding details.

In all these turned out really good, had a nice flavor and stored very nicely. I can't wait to hone my skills a little more and try these two recipes with my next batch of cutout cookies.