Cake, Batter, and Bowl

Sugar Cookie Dough Decorations

Desserts

Happy 4th of July! I wanted to whip up a fun treat to celebrate the holiday this weekend and while I was mulling over the red, white, and blue color scheme, I was reminded of the Chicago Cubs Dessert Sushi I made last year. Suddenly a light bulb went off – I should try making decorations with my eggless sugar cookie dough, which was the base of my dessert sushi! While I like playing with marshmallow fondant and creating crisp cute shapes to top cakes and cupcakes, I don’t enjoy the overly sweet bland taste and have often wondered why no one has come up with a tastier alternative. So, here’s my attempt!

Eggless sugar cookie dough is absolutely delicious so I whipped up a small batch, rolled it out, made cute little shapes with cookie cutters, and topped some Oreos with my designs. The dough is not quite as stiff as fondant, so you have to be a bit more careful with it, but I think it has a lot of potential! It’s also very moldable like Play Doh so I was able to make some cute little American flags. I’m going to try decorating cupcakes with it next time and maybe play around with chilling the dough as well before rolling it out. Overall, I think my foodie arts and crafts project was pretty successful! Ok, I’m off to eat a hot dog and munch on some yummy sweet potato chips from Trader Joe’s – hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend!

Sugar Cookie Dough Decorations
Printable Recipe

Ingredients:
3 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
Food coloring

Directions:
Mix butter and sugar in a large bowl until creamed. Add milk and vanilla and mix until smooth; stir in flour and salt and knead with your hands until well mixed. Mix dough with desired food colorings. Roll dough out with a rolling pin and use cookie cutters to create cute shapes or mold dough into desired shapes by hand. Top cookies or cupcakes with your decorations! Store all decorated cookies in the refrigerator.

Nutrition: 784 calories, 35.8g fat, 2.0g fiber, 8.9g protein per batch
Cost: $1.15 per batch

Peanut Butter and Jelly Tart

It’s peanut butter jelly time, peanut butter jelly time, peanut butter jelly time! Growing up, my mom always packed me a peanut butter sandwich, raisins, pretzels or chips, and a cookie for lunch, and then I picked up a carton of milk at school. I was such a picky...

Green Monster Cookies

My parents flew in from Des Moines this weekend to visit us for Mother’s Day! We visited the aquarium and the longest continuous running restaurant in the US, the Union Oyster House, and also watched a Red Sox game and toured the Sam Adams Brewery (which my hubby...

Peanut Butter and Banana Parfaits

I may have a hard time remembering most facts, but my memory is almost perfect when it comes to recalling the details of remarkable meals. Two of my very favorite desserts we enjoyed while living in Chicago featured bananas. We devoured crispy cannoli shells filled...

Christmas Dessert Sushi

If you’re having a bit of déjà vu, it’s because I posted a similar dessert sushi recipe back in March when I started my blog. But, I’ve since tweaked the original recipe after a few email requests and I think this version is definitely worth sharing! In all honestly,...

Vanilla Joe-Joe Strawberry Cheesecake

We have a drawer at work filled with snacks that help get us through the day. There are usually choices like pretzels, granola bars, nuts, chocolate, etc, but you’ll always find Trader Joe-Joe’s Vanilla Sandwich Crème Cookies (with real vanilla bean speckles!) because...

Orange Cardamom Chocolate Bars

I fell in love with cardamom a few years ago when I started drinking chai and have found it’s also lovely in baked goods. While perusing the fridge this weekend for something to satisfy my sweet tooth, I noticed the low-sugar orange marmalade my hubby enjoys and was...

Balsamic Strawberry and Goat Cheese Tarts

I’m sitting in Heathrow right now taking advantage of the free internet from Starbucks before we head to Vilnius via Helsinki in a couple of hours! I’m a planner by nature and usually take charge of organizing all the details of our vacations, but this time Apolinaras...

Pomegranate Blueberry Crumble

My favorite part of Trader Joe’s is the cereal aisle. They have so many unique choices! I normally have one of the high fiber/protein super nutritious ones for breakfast, but always enjoy a cup of the less healthy ones for dessert after dinner. They have one with...