Ug's Grad School Blues: Baking adventure, part III

Today we decided to ice the sugar cookies, and make one last batch of chocolate chip cookies. I tripled the "Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie" recipe from Crisco for this last batch.

My last chocolate chip cookie dough mix

Instead of shortening, we've been using butter, which aside from the chocolate chips and large bottle of real vanilla extract was the most expensive component of the cookies. With this last cookie dough mix I added closer to the full amount of fat that the Crisco recipe suggested.

R mixing royal icing for sugar cookie decorating

R followed her mother's royal icing recipe, but I didn't realize the box of confectioner's/powdered sugar I had bought would not be enough to make a stiffer icing. Here are the instructions we followed:

Royal Icing
3 egg whites
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
powdered sugar

Beat egg whites and cream of tartar on high speed until foamy. Gradually add powdered sugar, until desired consistancy. My suggestion is to make it a little stiff, since adding food colors waters it down. Place a few tablespoons into several bowls and color as desired. Squeeze through baggies to decorate cookies.

R commencing the decoration process

Next R began icing the sugar cookies. To decorate the 20+ cookies took her > 2 hours.

First batch of chocolate chip cookies out of the oven

Voila, after ~ 10 minutes of baking at 375 F, our chocolate chip cookies turned out flatter and more the consistency we wanted. Since we hadn't been expecting the cookies to spread so much, several of the cookies merged on one of the cookie sheets. Thus it was that we felt obliged to sample a few of the hot out of the oven cookies.

Closeup of additional boysenberry thumbprint cookies

Here's a picture of our less buttery boysenberry thumbprint cookies. They kinda turned out tasteless and floury, with a higher dough to boysenberry preserve ratio than our first batch of flatter ones baked on Saturday.