Just Baking

Take one look at the pictures of the ornately decorated cookies and cakes in Confetti Cakes by Elisa Strauss (with Christie Matheson), and you would expect them to take some work to complete. After I read over the book’s recipe for “Fruit Cookies,” I knew I had to be prepared for a good few hours of baking and decorating. So, I set aside Saturday to tackle the fruit cookies, hopefully, in the end, to produce a finished product as decieving as Ms. Strauss’s.

I began sometime in the afternoon, starting out by gathering the various ingredients needed for the sugar cookie recipe Ms. Strauss provides. The recipe first called for me to beat the butter and sugar together. Then I continued by adding the rest of the ingredients, including an egg, vanilla, and flour. At the end, the recipe specifically mentioned not to over-mix. I’m not really sure if I let the mixer run too long, but I’m pretty confident that it was not my fault the way the cookie dough turned out. The mixture resembled coarse crumbs rather than the usual yellow, smooth sugar cookie dough. After considering my next move, I decided to try and pack the “dough” as tightly as I could into a few balls and chill for the required time, 30 minutes.

When the time was up, I took out the balls of dough only to find that they were impossible to roll out. Touching them at all caused them to disintengrate into mounds of buttery powder. So, I added an extra half a stick of softened butter and chilled the dough balls again. Found dry yet again, I added 2 tablespoons of milk to the dough. I decided against chilling once more, figuring the dough was already cold enough. Moving on to the next step of the recipe, I rolled out the dough between two pieces of parchment paper, as advised, and left the sheets of dough to sit in the refrigerator for the next hour (personally, I advise to watch a movie in between these few minutes of active cooking time, or perhaps knit an afghan).

After the chilling time was up, I cut the dough into different fruit shapes using a glass about 3 1/2 inches across and a sharp knife. Then, while the oven was preheating, I froze the cut out shapes (on their ungreased cookie sheets) for 15 minutes. Then I baked them for about 12 minutes, until they were golden brown around the edges. Then, I repeated the last 2 steps 4 times.

And that, my fellow cooking friends, concluded the baking portion of making the “Fruit Cookies.” Because I didn’t want to be up until 11:00 at night decorating cookies, as appealing as that may sound to some of us, I decided to wait until Sunday to finish decorating.

The book’s recipe for “Royal Icing” actually turned out pretty good. It was perfectly sweet, and just the right consistency for piping colorful decorations onto cookies. The cookies did resemble fruit in the end. Grapefruits, oranges, watermelon, and kiwis: it almost made eating the cookies seem healthy.

While the actual cookies were a little bland and slightly dry, the frosting added the right amount of sugar, making them taste pretty good. That, actually, was one of the problems. The cookies were gone that night. I had labored in the kitchen for 2 days, dutifully chilling dough and piping on colored icing, and the cookies were eaten in 2 hours.

I don’t know what you will think of these cookies, but I say:

• Make your own sugar cookies from your favorite Betty Crocker cookbook, and be inspired by the decorating tips in Confetti Cakes.
• Don’t worry too much about sticking exactly to the decorating guidelines; if you don’t have a special icing tool, it can probably be replaced by an ordinary utensil, like a fork or spoon. Also, a little bit of green food coloring plus a tiny bit of yellow will have the same effect as “Avocado Green.”
• The book often suggested letting the frosting set for times up to three hours; I didn’t really follow those times too closely, I just waited until the frosting got a little hard.
• For kiwi and watermelon seeds, mini semisweet chocolate chips work well, unless you happen to have black food coloring on hand.
• Have fun!

Royal Icing (excerpted from Confetti Cakes by Elisa Strauss [and Christie Matheson])

1/3 cup pasteurized egg whites

4 1/2 cups + 1 Tbsp. sifted confectioners’ sugar

1/2 tsp lemon juice

Beat egg whites with a paddle attachment on medium speed until soft peaks form. Gradually add confectioners’ sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, on medium-low speed. Scrape down bowl thoroughly after each addition. Add the lemon juice and beat on medium-high speed until stiff peaks form and the icing is no longer shiny (6-8 minutes). Use immediately or place in an airtight container. It will keep in the fridge for up to five days.

To decorate Fruit Cookies:

Use a 3 1/2 inch glass to cut out grapefruits. Cut some slices in half to make oranges and watermelon. Use a sharp knife to cut out irregular oval shapes for kiwis.

Outline the cookie with stiff yellow, orange, or green icing. With white icing pipe the rind (and sections on grapefruit and orange), except for the kiwi. For grapefruit and orange, drizzle light orange loose icing into the section. For kiwi, put a dab of white icing in the middle of the cookie and fill in the rest with loose avocado green icing. Pipe small black seeds around white center (or use mini chocolate chips). Use a toothpick to spread on brown “fuzz” icing along the edge of the cookie. For watermelon, fill in with loose hot pink icing. When slightly set, pipe on black seeds. Allow cookies to dry completely before eating.

–written by guest reviewer Monica, as Alicia was experiencing a loss of wisdom teeth.