Words with Cookies!

Ever since getting my iPhone last year, I've been obsessed with it. I'm embarassed to say it has basically become and extension of my arm. But there's just always so much to do! Like Words with Friends for instance! I have always been a fan of word games, so it's pretty fun to have one in your pocket at any given moment.

And my friends are no different... especially my good friend, Matt. The only difference is Matt consistently beats me in Words with Friends. I wish I was joking- I only won ONCE!

Anyway, this past Christmas, Matt proposed to his girlfriend and my good friend, Teri. This past weekend was their engagement party and I knew right away what I wanted to do for them. I wanted to make cookies that were actually Words with Friends "tiles" so I could spell out a special message to the bride and groom to be!

For Christmas, I had gotten a box of 101 cookie cutters. So I've been dying to whip them out and bake up some fun shapes. Funny enough, out of 101 cookie cutters, there was not a single square or rectangle in sight. I wound up using the Haunted House cutter and just cut the "roof" off. It worked out pretty well, though it did leave me with rectangular tiles instead of square. C'est la vie!

Rolled Sugar Cookies

- 1 1/2 cups butter, softened

- 2 cups white sugar

- 4 eggs

- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

- 5 cups all-purpose flour

- 2 teaspoons baking powder

- 1 teaspoon salt (I use salted butter and omit this part.)

1. Cream together your butter and sugar in a large bowl.

2. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Add flour, baking powder, and salt and beat on low speed until dough forms. Cover and chill dough for at least 2 hours, preferably overnight.*

Yeah, I taped it shut since my cling wrap wasn't being very clingy. And what??

*I only chilled my dough for 2 hours. It wasn't the easiest to work with. I had to use a lot of flour on my rolling surface and on my rolling pin to make it work. If it was chilled over night though, it would be much easier to work with.

3. Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees F. Generously dust rolling surface and rolling pin with flour and roll out chilled cookie dough to about 1/4" to 1/2" thickness. Cut out dough with any cookie cutter and place on ungreased cookie sheet about an inch apart.

This makes for a soft and thick sugar cookie.

4. Bake 6-8 minutes or until edges are golden. Remove from cookie sheet and cool on racks.

These stackable cooling racks are clutch in my tiny kitchen!

I actually had a bit of dough leftover after I made the necessary tiles (plus a few extra in case I messed one up!) so I decided to make some heart cookies, too.

Since Valentine's Day is coming up, of course!

From here, I whipped up some royal icing for the tops of the cookies. (Please see our Giraffe Cake post for the recipe for royal icing!) I made one batch and split it. I dyed about 3/4 of it yellow for the tiles themselves. I used Wilton's food coloring gel in "Orange" and "Sunshine Yellow" to get the proper color. I used about 3 parts of the yellow to one part of the orange. It was the perfect shade! I then dyed the leftover royal icing black and piped the letters onto the cookies.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a big enough tray to display these cookies, but I have to say, they looked pretty darn cute on my kitchen counter!