Simple Ways to Make Cookies Special

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    Hi everyone! I am just home from Girl's Camp!  I am still feeling exhausted after 3 days home, thus the lateness of today's post!  
    This year at camp, I was asked to make the girls special cookies as a handout to go with the speakers who were there to talk about the temples of our church. They needed to be beautiful and delicious and there needed to be about 125 of them!  
     The problem is that I am not a terrific cookie designer.  I can decorate with the kids and have some fun, but this was a different story.  In the end though, the cookies came out really beautiful, there were lots of compliments and my stress over the entire project was relieved! Here are some of the tips I learned as I worked on this project, plus another idea that I came up with for the 4th of July.

The Baking

• I baked my cookies well in advance and froze them so they wouldn't become stale.  There was no way I wanted to bake 125 cookies in the middle of a Phoenix June and sweat to death over them.  Also, if there were any mishaps, like broken cookies or a mistake in the recipe or burning, there was plenty of time to make a new batch. ( I will not confess to any of that!)
• Use a recipe you trust.  If you are doing cut-out cookies, you want them to hold their shape well.  I consulted with my friend Melissa, who does wonderful cakes and cookies and she recommended this recipe from Sweet Sugarbelle. 
• If you are doing cut-out cookies, use 1 or 2 special cutters for all of them.  Except maybe at Christmas when lots of Christmas shapes are great.  But for my purpose, the temple, I used 2 temple cutters.  One of the Salt Lake Temple and one of the Phoenix Temple.  I'll tell you why.
• We had some special diets, so I made a Vegan Gluten Free version of the cookie.  To keep them straight, I made the Vegan Gluten Free as the Phoenix Temple and the regular cookies as the Salt Lake Temple. That way I was sure not to mix them up. 

The Decorating

     Because we had special diets involved, I made all of the icing the same, without milk or butter and without meringue powder.  That way I didn't mix anyone's diet's up.  Also, I always baked and decorated the gluten free cookies first so that there would be no residue of wheat, etc where I was working.  We didn't have anyone actually diagnosed with celiac disease, but there were people who knew that they felt better if they ate a certain way, (gluten free or lactose free or vegan) so I didn't have to worry too much about killing anyone but I did want to accommodate their diets. 

• The icing I used was simply powdered sugar, corn syrup, almond flavoring and almond milk.  I made the mixture thicker to pipe an outline around the cookies and I made it thinner to fill it in. Let the outline dry a bit, and then fill in either by piping or spreading with a knife. Then, I used simple pearly white ball sprinkles  and gold sugar on the tip of the spire to give the idea of an Angel Moroni on the top.  This icing will harden and allow you to stack the cookies later.

Just a few of the many!

• As you can see, I slipped each cookie into a bag and added a label.  I am totally converted to these little bags when it comes to making things look more special! They make the cookie look so nice.  I have also used them to hold a print to protect it and make it look more professional. The price is great, under $7 for 200 bags!  I made the label on Avery using address labels 8160.  You can click my button for a copy of mine. 
• When you have a lot of cookies to decorate, start a couple of days in advance and then refrigerate them until you are ready to give them out. 

Temple Cookie Labels

You would think that after all of those cookies, I would be finished with baking cookies for awhile. Especially since it is summer!   But with the 4th of July coming, I decided to make a few more.  Nothing too fancy this time, but I have some extra white chocolate lying around so I decided to try to make a little something to dress these cookies up. 

I melted the chocolate and then spread it on parchment or waxed paper to look like a firework burst. I added a toothpick and sprinkled them with silver and gold dusting sugar.

When the chocolate is dry, you can stick the toothpick into the top of the cookie or a cupcake. I piped words like "POW" on mine and just laid them on top for a nice effect. Of course, the chocolate tastes delicious!

   No matter how quickly you have to decorated the cookies, a little extra touch can elevate them, as well as putting them on a special tray or platter! 
​    Do you have any secret tips that make us non-professionals make our cookies look better? Drop a hint or 2 in the comments! 

This post reminds me of some others you may enjoy: 

This post had great tips about cookie decorating with kids

Free Printable Camp Handouts from past years.