Shamrock Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing

I have a small collection of cookie cutters. They are cute and hang under a shelf in our kitchen. However, I’ll admit, I rarely bake sugar cookies. I never wanted to make up a bunch of colored frosting  pipe designs on them and have a cookie with way too much frosting. Recently I read a post at one of my favorite blogs, Annie’s Eats, that had a tutorial on royal icing. It looked pretty simple. You whip up the frosting in the mixer, pour some into a piping bag, pipe around the edges of the cookie and let it harden. Then, you water down some of the icing, pour it onto the cookie, and use a tooth pick to help it spread out.  It looked easy enough, but you never know! I tested it out back in February when I made the heart sugar cookies. Surprisingly enough, they were pretty easy! The end result was a pretty cookie with a thin layer of royal frosting that hardened as it cooled. It is nice because you can stack or wrap up the cookies without the frosting getting all messy. 

Since the first attempt went pretty well, I decided to try again. This time, with cookie cutters that celebrate my heritage and my husband’s name-sake, St. Patrick’s Day. Shamrock cookies! I couldn’t find my shamrock cookie cutter, so I took Baileigh and headed to my favorite local baking shop,The Calico Bean Market. They have an entire room in the back dedicated to baking! Cookie cutters, food coloring, flours, misc. baking ingredients and an ENTIRE wall dedicated to sprinkles. If you ever need baking ingredients, check it out! It’s on Bluff Street, by the 4^th street elevator. The owner is super friendly and helpful, too! While at Calico Bean I picked up meringue powder (for the icing), shamrock and butterfly cookie cutters, green food coloring and green and purple sprinkles. I baked the cookies on Saturday night, let them cool and then Baileigh and I got to work Sunday frosting the cookies! I baked shamrocks for me to decorate and the butterflies for her. She did an excellent job frosting using my new decorator bottles (via Pampered Chef) and enjoyed using lots of sprinkles!

My Shamrock cookies!

Baileigh's butterfly cookies!

Hard at work!

Cookie Recipe:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/The-Best-Rolled-Sugar-Cookies/Detail.aspx

(The only thing I changed was using Almond extract for the vanilla. I like almond flavoring better in sugar cookies for some reason!)

Icing Recipe:
http://www.sweetsugarbelle.com/2011/04/royal-icing-101-or-all-roads-lead-to-rome/

The cookies looked and tasted delicious! I made way too much frosting, so I have plenty to use when I made Easter cookies in a couple weeks!

Here are two blogs that have beautiful sugar cookies! Both have tutorials too which help beginners like me!

Annie's Eats

Sweet Sugar Belle

Mixed Berry Muffins

Since I'm off work today, I decided to make muffins with Baileigh. My co-worker, Angie, is an amazing cook/baker and has a family cookbook that she and her mom & sister collaborated in. One of the recipes in the book is for Yogurt Muffins. The recipe is actually from an old, little shop in Dubuque called Annie's Lil' Bits. The owners retired a few years ago, but published several of their recipes. One of the things it was famous for was these yogurt muffins. I have never made them before, but as I was browsing Angie's cookbook, I saw she had included the recipe from Annie's. Below is the recipe & a few pictures of my delicious muffins.


Yogurt Muffins (Annie's Lil' Bits)
1 c. butter, melted
2 c. vanilla yogurt
1 c. sugar
2 tsp vanilla
4 egg whites
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
4 c. flour
2 cups any fruit (berries, bananas, peaches, etc.)


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Blend together all wet ingredients and sugar.  Blend together all dry ingredients. Mix wet and dry mixtures together. Add the fruit. Top with cinnamon sugar, white sugar or brown sugar, depending on the fruit.


Bake for 20-25 minutes. Makes about 24 regular muffins or 12 jumbo muffins.

Heres the muffins before they hit the oven! I used frozen mixed berries (thawed)

Mmm, just out of the oven! The juices from the berries started to give the muffins a blueish color...but they still taste great!

Mmm berry muffins! Perfect treat for this monday off work! Thanks Angie for sharing your families cookbook!