The September 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mandy of “What the Fruitcake?!” Mandy challenged everyone to make Decorated Sugar Cookies based on recipes from Peggy Porschen and The Joy of Baking.
Our Daring Baker host this month gave us the challenge of making decorated sugar cookies. This was a relatively easy challenge to do dairy-free. I used a big vanilla bean for flavor and swapped Earth Balance margarine in place of the butter called for. The technique in the given recipe was interesting. It involves rolling the dough between parchment and then chilling the parchment sandwiched dough. But the lower melting/softening temperature of EB tub margarine made the dough sticky and fussy. I ended up improvising and tossing it in the freezer. With the real whole vanilla bean in them, these cookies came out with decent vanilla flavor but they did spread more than I would have liked. There needs to be some tweaking to make this recipe usable for more elaborate cookie cutters. Or I'd have to compromise and use Earth Balance in stick form.
Mandy told us to decorate the cookies with September as the theme. What could be better than a fresh pack of markers to celebrate back to school, edible food color markers that is, something I've been itching to have an excuse to buy. Plus it made a fun coloring project for my son Alex. Alex came up with a couple different designs including his recent favorite, the man-eating plant. I recruited my husband John for some cookie decorating and he made up a Raptisoft game trio of cookies. I contributed an apple design so I could say I gave it a try. Thanks for the challenge!
Links:
-The challenge recipes are available from our host Mandy who blogs at What the Fruitcake?!
-Mandy adapted the sugar recipes from Peggy Porschen. They were published in Cosmopolitan Bride Oct/Nov 2008 and also found in her book, “Romantic Cakes”.
-The Royal Icing recipe adapted was from The Joy of Baking.
-Or you can buy royal icing mix, which is just powdered egg whites and powdered sugar.
-Visit the Daring Kitchen and see other sugary works of art made this month by browsing the Daring Baker Blogroll.
Alex hamming it up with the markers
Drawing man-eating plants
Alex's cookie creations
Fritz offers his tasting assistance
Meanwhile, Penny has been hanging out with Grandma at the Arts and Apples Festival
And getting her first tastes of solid food
