For today’s snack post, I made some Toy Story themed sugar cookies! These were a bit of a challenge, as I am not the greatest in the decorating department!
I started with a basic sugar cookie recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction. This was a really great recipe that I would definitely use again, very easy but great tasting cookies. They also held their shape really well, which can sometimes be a concern when you’re making shaped cookies.
I had three different shapes of cookies (because obviously one just isn’t enough of a challenge…)- a circle to make Jessie’s hat as per Disney Family’s recipe, a Buzz Lightyear shape using the cookie cutter my partner gave me for our anniversary a few weeks ago (he knows me well) and a Mickey shape using a cutter we got at Disney World last year.
The cookies themselves were pretty straightforward to make, mixing flour, baking powder and salt, then creaming butter and sugar, adding an egg and vanilla essence, and combining with the flour mix. Sally also suggests adding some almond essence, which I didn’t do because I didn’t have any, but I’d love to try next time and see what it’s like.
Once I had a lovely big ball of dough, I popped it in the fridge for about 2 hours although Sally suggests you can leave it in the fridge for up to 2 days! Once it was chilled, I rolled some out and cut the shapes, then placed them on a baking tray and cooked them! The recipe says to cook for 11-12 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges, this only took about 8 minutes in our oven.
Once all the cookies were cooked and cooled, it was time for the tricky part! I started by decorating the Buzz Lightyear cookies- I had some lilac fondant that I rolled out and cut using the cookie cutter/stencil so I would have an imprint of his face on the fondant. Then I simply spread a small amount of buttercream on the cookie and popped the fondant on top. I think the end result looked quite cool, though I wonder next time whether I could attempt to ice over the imprint with a piping bag- this may highlight the picture better.
For my Mickey cookies, I simply piped on some thinned royal icing and covered in a variety of sprinkles (I have a surprisingly large collection of sprinkles in my cupboard). If you’re looking for a more exciting way of decorating your Mickey cookies (as you should be), I came across this amazing post from We Know Disney who have decorated using food colouring mixed with alcohol to make rainbow cookies! I will definitely attempt this sometime soon!
Now the most difficult cookies turned out to be the Jessie’s Hat cookies (which inspired the whole post, so that was disappointing). My first problem was that I made the cookies too big (what a problem to have!) so that the sweets would make them look more like a sombrero than a cowgirl hat. I used royal icing mixed with a concentrated red food colouring from HobbyCraft which worked well and looked really nice. My other problem, however, was the white icing. First I tried using a tube of writing icing (also from HobbyCraft), however this was quite difficult to use and my hand kept cramping. Also I ran out after 2 cookies. Then I tried using the royal icing from the Mickey cookies, but it was too thin! So ultimately, they didn’t look as great as they could have, but you know what, they tasted good!
VERDICT: I love the cookie recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction, and will definitely be using it again to practice my decorating skills (or lack thereof!). I also think it’s a great recipe if you needed to bake something but didn’t have a lot of ingredients available, because it uses a lot of the basics. It would be a good recipe to make with kids, who I’m sure would love decorating! I will try it out with my niece and nephew once the lockdown is over.
IN FUTURE I WOULD:
- Practice my decorating skills!
- Make smaller hat cookies
- Maybe use a thicker royal icing for the lacing on Jessie’s hat
- Try making one shape of cookie rather than three…
Exploring the world of Disney, one film at a time. 