Food That Looks Like Food

For some strange reason, and I am not sure why, I have a fascination with cookie cutters. I don't even make roll out cookies all that often! You could call my fascination and obsession and not be far off base. I have 12 clear shoe boxes underneath my bakers table that are packed with cookie cutters. Then I have a cute cookie jar with one cookie cutter for each month in the kitchen. Animals, food, holidays... you name it, I have a cutter for that. I love them all equally and have started to catalog them to prevent me from buying duplicates. Somehow I managed to avoid duplicating when I bought 24 new cutters at the Sur La Table sale. 56 cent cutters!!!

I think my obsession worsened when I got the book Cookie Craft for Christmas. All the beautifully decorated cookies in there are so inspiring, yet I still haven't made any like theirs, using the flooding technique. To my defense, I didn't have a key ingredient for stabilizing the icing, but I have since purchased some. I even have a few select cookies that I baked off that have been sitting on the counter ready to be expertly decorated when I have time. We will see. For now, you can see my food decorated like food cookies along with some animals and my favorite, the skull and crossbones. I started out strong, but started to get tired an hour and a half into it, and you can tell. These were made from my very favorite sugar cookie recipe, given to me by my mom. They are perfect, thick, soft sugar cookies that taste even better when given a healthy dose of your favorite frosting on top. Enjoy!

Mom's Sugar Cookies

(1)
1 C butter
1 1/2 C sugar
1 egg
1/2 C sour cream
1 tsp vanilla

(2)
4 C flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Frosting
3 C powdered sugar
1/3 C very soft butter
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 T milk

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Mix all of (1) together in a large bowl. Add all of (2) gradually. Refrigerate dough for an hour or 2. Roll out dough very thick, about 1/4 inch, and cut into shapes. Bake for 8-11 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack. Mix all frosting ingredients until very smooth. Frost and decorate cooled cookies.