A Very Merry Un-Birthday

A few weeks ago, the Girls' ministry at our church had a Mad Hatter Tea Party, and I volunteered to make and decorate cookies to go with the theme. I've always wanted to learn to decorate cut out cookies, but to be quite honest, I've never been very good at step 1--actually cutting out the cookies and having them maintain their shape getting them from the countertop to the cookie sheet.

I did a little bit of searching and came across this recipe on "Bake at 350" linked on the Pioneer Woman's blog (of course she would have the answers!) for cookies. You don't even have to refrigerate the dough. It was good and thick, and even I, the cookie cutter challenged, was able to work with it.

I also used this recipe from Bridget at "Bake at 350" for royal icing. It calls for meringue powder which I thought was safest since last time I checked I'm not supposed to be munching on raw egg stuff. (And yeah, I don't bake cookies that I can't eat.) It worked out well, and I think with a little bit of practice I'll get the hang of it.

{I started with the pink. You can totally tell they were the first I tried.}

The cookies were pretty plain at this point, but later on (and I didn't get a pic--bummer) I wrote "eat me" on some of them. You know, like the Mad Hatter's Tea Party!

Next time I will add a little bit of almond extract to the icing, and I probably won't leave the cookies in the oven quite as long. We like our cookies a little softer in the middle than these. Overall, I love how they turned out!