Let It Snow!

I love snowmen.  They say winter in that fresh, fluffy snow way – not the cold, mushy, slippery way.  So these cookies just make me smile, want to pull out my skates, grab a hot chocolate and embrace the winter.

Last year I made gingerbread boys, girls and snowmen inspired by Bakerella, one of my favorite bloggers.  Last week I was making cookies for a baby naming similar to ones made by Bridgette from Bake at 350.  And then I thought I think I can combine the two styles to come up with my new favorite cookie ever – and it’s very Flour Child.

You can be as simple snowmen or fancy pants as you want with these cookies and here is how I did it.

Materials Needed for Decorating:

- large square cookie cutter (I used the large square scalloped one from Copper Gifts) – it is such a great cookie cutter that can be used in a kazillion different ways)

- gel past to colour some of the royal icing (I used royal blue)

- royal icing – as always, I really like the Ateco meringue powder

- piping bags

- sprinkles, coloured Tic Tacs and food writing pens

Instructions and Tips:

To make the snowmen heads. Draw circles on a piece of parchment paper.  I used a Sharpie and drew circles around 1¾” or 3½ cm.  Flip the paper over and trace with royal icing. Let them dry overnight.

Use a food writer to draw on the eyes and mouth.

Add sprinkles to embellish cheeks and facinators.  Tic Tacs are the perfect ear muffs.  I used white royal icing to add the sprinkles

Orange royal icing is the perfect carrot nose.

Use your favorite sugar cookie recipe and cut out the squares.

Outline each cookie with white royal icing

Fill or flood the cookies.  I like using the squeeze bottles because it is so much cleaner then a piping bag when flooding cookies.

Use a toothpick or bamboo skewer to pull the icing to fill the cookie.  If you just use the squeeze bottle there is a chance that you will overflood the cookie – it is always a fine line between the perfectly flooded cookie and a cookie that is over flowing with icing.  The toothpick “pull” really helps ensure an evenly flooded cookie.

Want another trick?  I use a Silpat when decorating cookies so they don’t slip around.

Place the snowman head in the centre of the flooded cookie.  I also used a few little snowflake sprinkles that I found at the local bulk food store.

Let the cookies dry overnight.

PME 1.5 is my favorite writing tip so I used it to write "Let It Snow" on each cookie.

I love the way these cookies turned out.

Now I'm just waiting for it to snow (sorta).