Finger on the Shutter

By: Jill Finger

Dec 19 2014

Category: Uncategorized

1 Comment

I’m a sucker for new cookie recipes.  Wednesday, on the Today Show, there was a cookie competition among three bakers.  Of course, the chocolate cookie won, but I was intrigued by the gingerbread cookies with white piped icing.  Wes went on the Today Show web site and printed out the recipe for me.  Thursday morning, I made the dough and stuck it in the fridge until I got home from visiting Mom.  The dough was great to work with– easy to roll out and cut.  I baked all stars because I had done a different kind of gingerbread with my gingerbread man cookie cutter.   I started mixing the royal icing with my hand mixer, which promptly died, spewing little pieces of plastic into the bowl.  I dumped that icing and started again, this time using my stand mixer.  When the icing was ready, I scooped some into a ziplock sandwich bag and snipped off a bottom corner to use as a piping tool for decorating the cookies.  My snip was a little too large, resulting in a very wide stream of icing coming out.  On the second bag, I made a tiny cut and that worked a lot better, but because the zip part of the bag had icing on it, the bag wouldn’t close tight, and when I squeezed the icing out, it came, not only out of the tiny hole, but out of the top and all over my hands.  I now have a great deal of respect for the bakers who sell the beautifully decorated  cookies.  I will probably try this again next year, because it was fun, but I’m only making gingerbread men.  Squeezing dots of icing for eyes and buttons will be a lot easier!