I quickly enlisted my mom for many reasons. One, she has an amazing kitchen with a beautiful gas oven and large countertop and an extra fridge for keeping buckeyes and cookies cold. Two, I love to bake with my mom. We catch up, listen to music, sample our goods, and just generally have a good time. I always imagine us getting together in December to make Christmas cookies together, but the holiday craziness often prevents that. So, instead, moments like this make up for it. Afterall, my momma taught me everything I need to know about baking.
We spent Saturday morning/afternoon working on the cookies and buckeyes. Mom had generously made up the dough ahead of time so that it would be ready and it always seems to work better when chilled.
I brought my little buffalo cookie cutter I bought last year at the Roosevelt Inauguration House (was it Teddy or FDR? Somehow when I drink a little wine, I get confused on that subject :) But that's a story for a different day.) at Christmastime. The cookie cutter came with a crappy shortbread recipe that wasn't even close to shortbread. So, it was time to use this little guy on good ol' sugar cookies.
We also pulled out a "U" cookie cutter (you know I love monograms! Remember? Read about it here.) that was from a bucket of alphabet cookie cutters I used back in my Residence Life days. We thought it would add a nice touch.
When it came to frosting our cookies, we knew we'd be using the red and blue colors of the "Buffalo" Bills on our baby buffalo cookies and probably a purple color to compliment Hege's color choice for her wedding. To add in her second color of silver, we bought silver decorating balls and used them as eyeballs on the buffalo (I swear it's not creepy at all.)
To get the desired red and blue, mom showed me some special frosting dye that I'm sure all the professionals use. It looks like gel and it is super potent because it stained my fingers just getting it out of the jar. I assure you, though, it's 100% non-toxic and edible. But as strong as it was, it required a lot of coloring to get it to the right color for the Bills look.
As for the buckeyes, they were easy-peasy and mom took care of all the dipping. She's perfected this technique by using baking chocolate which is nice and smooth. We put them in little silver cups to dress them up a bit.
But, needless to say, we got what we were looking for and had a lot of fun in the process. Here are the finished products:
That's a lot of cookies!
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