Kira Grogg · this is what i do

My boyfriend hosted a Mario Kart 8 tournament last weekend. I've been a huge Nintendo fan ever since I slowly appropriated each of my brother's consoles for myself. I wanted to bring a treat, and I figured what could be better than cookies shaped like the boost mushrooms! Get it? Because the cookies have sugar = energy = boost?

I started with an old sugar cookie recipe that has forever been my favorite. My family calls them "Waveguide sailing cookies" because apparently my parents first encountered them when sailing on my uncle's boat "Waveguide", but it is a fairly basic sugar cookie recipe. The dough is simple to put together, but the rest of the process can be lengthly, depending on how fancy you want to get.

Blend the butter and sugar. Add the egg, rum, and vanilla. Mix really well, because any lumps of butter will show up as bubbles in the cookies and can interfere with the decoration.

Add the flour gradually, and mix just enough to get it all incorporated (light kneading may be required). Divide the dough into two lumps, place on large sheets of wax paper, flatten, wrap up, and chill for an hour.

Turn oven to 350°F, and while the oven is heating, roll out half of the dough to desired thickness, usually between 1/8 and 1/4 inch. Thinner results in crunchier cookies, thicker becomes chewier, I like them somewhere in the middle.

Once the dough is rolled out, cut the desired shapes, in this case, mushrooms. Because I did not have a mushroom cookie cutter, I made my own out of a beer can (instructions).

I wasn't entirely satisfied with the shape, but it was good enough to get the point across.

Be careful when transferring from the rolled dough to the cookie sheet (with parchment), so that they don't get bent out of shape. I sugared some of my cookies before putting into the oven, but it is easier to get the design to show up with icing.

Bake for 8-15 minutes, depending on thickness and desired doneness. I check on mine around the 5-8 minute mark to make sure they aren't over cooking. Once done, let sit for a minute or two on the pan, then transfer to cooling rack. Let them cool completely to room temperature.

Now comes the fun (but time consuming) part: the icing. I start with about a cup of powdered sugar and add either milk or lemon juice until it is a drizzle-able consistency. If I use milk, I often add vanilla, almond, or orange extract for a little bit more flavor. I personally prefer icing to frosting, but frosting is also acceptable. I didn't keep track of how much powdered sugar I used in the end (I kept making more as needed), but it was definitely more than a cup.

For the mushrooms, I left the bottom part un-iced, because the cookie was already the right color (and there is actually such a thing as too much sugar). The tops I colored with red dyed icing. It took quite a bit of red dye to get it deep enough, but some food coloring (such as this: Super Red Gel Color), will work better than the cheap stuff I used.

I let those dry completely, so that when I added the white dots, the colors wouldn't bleed. For the dots, I made the icing much thicker, to keep shape and cover the red completely. Some cookies were more successful than others...

Finally, I added the eyes using melted chocolate chips and a toothpick. Handling the chocolate was tricky, but it turned out okay, if not very precise. I was getting a little bit lazy at that point. Below is what the final products looked like. I made a couple golden mushrooms too, for which I used the lemon juice based icing (which is usually my favorite).

In case you are wondering about the tournament: boyfriend won, I squeaked into 4th place (out of 12).

Tags: food, crafts, cute, baking, yums