Our annual Cookie Contest crowned two worthy winners:
For Most Beautiful Cookie, Kathy Manchip emerged victorious with her stunning Holly Jolly Iced Sugar Cookies. They tasted wonderful – almost too beautiful to chomp into (but we did)! Congratulations, Kathy! Her beautiful recipe is below.
Holly Jolly Sugar Cookies
Ingredients:
– A batch of sugar cookies using your preferred recipe. (I cut out rounds, but any shape with enough surface area would work well.)
– A batch of royal icing using your preferred recipe. (Leave most of it white and color a small amount green.)
– Small red sugar beads/balls. (You can get these at Jo-Ann’s or online.)
– Two piping bags and two round tips, one larger and one small.
Directions:
– Fill the piping bag with the royal icing, one color for each bag. Attach the tips, using the smaller round tip on the green bag.
– Pipe a border of the white royal icing onto the cookie, and flood it. There are many online videos for how to do this if you haven’t tried it before.
– While the icing is still wet (it will form a crust pretty quickly, so work fast) and using the green icing, pipe a small, elongated blob onto the surface of the white icing. Do them at an angle to each other like the hands of a clock.
– Take your tooth pick and drag the edges of the green blob outward to create the spikes of the holly leaf.
– Also while the icing is still wet, drop three red sugar beads/balls onto the surface of the cookie where the leaves almost touch.
– Allow the royal icing to dry and harden for at least a few hours.
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| Too beautiful to eat? Kathy Manchip’s Holly Jolly cookies. |
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| Judge Atteberry with cookie artiste Kathy. |
For Most Delicious Cookie, Lois Brandt’s Giant Turtle Cookie confections were a huge hit. Here’s the sinfully scrummy recipe:
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| Lois Brandt’s Turtle Cookies made our taste buds sing! |
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| Lois loves her new signed print by David Weisner! |
With electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat butter and sugar until
light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add egg yolk, milk, and vanilla; mix
until incorporated. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture until just
combined.
Whisk egg whites in a bowl until frothy. Place chopped pecans in
another bowl. Roll chilled dough into 1 ½ inch balls, dip in egg
whites, and then roll in pecans. Place balls about 2 inches apart on a
baking sheet. Using a 1/2 teaspoon measuring spoon, make an indentation
in the center of each dough ball. Note that the original recipe
called for smaller 1 inch balls. The caramel/chocolate ratio will be
higher (it was too sweet for me). 1 inch balls gives you a batch of
about 24 cookies.
Once cookies are removed from the oven, gently re-press the
indentations. Fill each indentation with about 1/2 teaspoon of the
caramel mixture. Cool on the pan for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire
rack to cool completely. If you are going to use the drizzle, put waxed paper under the wire rack to catch stray chocolate.
Place chocolate and shortening in a small zip-top plastic bag. Set bag
in a bowl of warm water to soften. Gently knead the chocolate with
your fingers until melted and smooth, placing back in the warm water for
a minute or two as needed. Make sure chocolate is well-kneaded, otherwise you get a constipated plastic bag.