House Cookies

My sweet friend Jessica gave me a bunch of totally awesome cookies cutters for Christmas. One of them is this cool house shape and as soon as I saw it, I knew what I had to do with it.

Jack has been renting a place and working on buying a house for a while. After a lot of searching and a few setbacks, he found a place and closed this past Monday. I'm so proud of him! And the house he found, which has its quirks, is awesome. So, to celebrate, I knew I had to make him cookies and it was the perfect opportunity to use my new house shape! (I know I've tagged this post under cakes when it's actually about cookies. Deal with it!)

But you, dear readers, know I can't just cut a few shapes and call it done. I have to decorate! I've never actually made cookies like this before. I've cut shapes and I've decorated with sprinkles and icing, but I've never cut shapes and decorated with royal icing. I had to do some research and find some recipes.

Mixing Cookie Dough

Sugar cookies tend to be the best for shapes. Jack's favorite cookie is chocolate chip, but you can't really roll that out (too many lumpy chips) so I just had to make sugar cookies and he had to like it!

Balls of Dough

I made the dough into balls because I had limited space to roll it out flat so I made little batches.

The Cookie Cutter!

Here is my cutting board and cookie cutter all ready to be floured.

Rolling Dough

Rolling cookies for cut-outs does take some skill. My first couple balls were too flat and ended up very very brown. They were still tasty, but I made the last few thicker and that worked better.

Cookie Cutter on Dough

Finished Cookies

Don't they look delicious? Next step, icing!

Mixing Icing

Royal icing is fun stuff. I have learned a bit through all my cakes. People don't care if you make them from scratch or not. If it looks awesome, a mix is just fine. I admit I did use a mix.

Coloring

Icing cookies involves making an outline and then filling it in, a process called floating. I outlined it with a roof color and a house color, so a few globs of brown gel food coloring makes the roof.

Outlined Cookies

I just put the icing in little plastic bags and cut the tip to line. The white bag gave me a bit of trouble, but it worked. The next step was red icing on the chimneys, which I just slathered on with a spoon.

Floating

Floating is really fun! Give the outline a bit to dry, add some water to thin out the icing, then squeeze it all out and swish it about to cover the whole area.

Iced Cookies

The cookies are iced! The whole process took about an hour. I left them to dry overnight so the icing would be nice and firm for me to put the details on.

Little Blue Doors

I could have mixed up more icing and iced the details, but I decided drawing them with food coloring markers was just going to be easier. That was mostly true, but if I put too much pressure on it, it poked right through the icing.

Lights in the Windows

Yellow squared make windows. I'll finish it by outlining the windows and drawing panes with black.

Bushes too

It wouldn't be a home without some cute little bushes. There are little red berries or flowers on them too, but it's hard to see that in this image.

Finished Cookies!

A little pearl in each door for a doorknob and they're done! They were so much fun, and they were delicious.

Congratulations, my sweetie, on your knew house!