Home-Sweet-Home-Sugar-Cookies
house-cookies-group

It’s been almost a year since Mr. Gish and I made the move from San Francisco to Oakland. We left behind our first Bay Area apartment, the ability to walk to work, and living above a Starbucks. What we have now are trees (how I missed trees!), cool neighbors (that we’ve actually met), living in a bitchin’ city, easy access to San Francisco if we want it, and a home that we can call our own.

I wanted to make house-shaped cookies for our housewarming party last year, but we never actually had one. Since we’re coming up on our one year anniversary here in Oakland, I figured now would be a great time to bust out with the house cookies! I’ve picked up a California cookie cutter sometime along the way, so I brought it out to play as well.

house-cookies-cutout

There’s something about this electric green color that always draws me to it. I’m not into bright colors generally, but I do love this green.

house-cookie-outlined

I was inspired by these polka dot cookies I saw a while back. To decorate the houses, I made some gray and white royal icing and had them both at the ready. I’m still very new to this, so I decorate one cookie at a time. I filled the cookie entirely with the thinned out gray icing and then went right back and dotted the gray with thinned out white icing.

house-cookies-gray-quad

Oh yeah, I made some light orange and gray cookies too. What can I say? I like a little variety.

house-cookies-dotted

I then decorated these here California cookies. I wanted to keep these simple, so I outlined them in red to match the red hearts I was using. Once the red outline was dry, I filled them with white icing and placed a heart onto the wet white icing.

california-cookie-outlined

Home is where the heart is. Get it?

california-shaped-cookie

With some extra electric green icing I had, I used a #1 tip and got some writing practice in. This was actually the first time I’ve ever written on a cookie. Not bad, right?

house-suger-cookies-boxed

23 Responses

    • Angelica

      Hi Abby! Sorry, I didn’t see your comment before today (yikes). I used royal icing for the frosting and got the different colors using a teeny bit of Super Black, Orange, and Electric Green from the Americolor food color brand.

      Reply
      • molly

        where do you buy your royal icing? or do you make it yourself?

      • Angelica

        Yup, I do make the royal icing myself, Molly. I should probably do a post dedicated to royal icing at some point, but until then…

        4 Tbsp of meringue powder
        1/2 cup water
        16 oz powdered sugar, sifted

        Mix the meringue powder and water in a large bowl and mix with an electric mixer for about 10 seconds – until it’s generally mixed together and nice and froth. Add in the powdered sugar and mix for several minutes, until the consistency is on that you need. To start, I generally mix until the icing still has a bit of “flow” to it. Right around where a line drawn by a butter knife through the top of the icing will disappear in about 10 seconds.

  1. Taylor

    Did you make the green icing as well? If so, how? If not, where did you buy it? Totally stealing this idea for our housewarming party next week!

    Reply
    • Angelica

      Hi Taylor – yes, I do make the green icing as well. It’s also made from royal icing (4 Tbsp meringue powder, 1/2 cup water, 16 oz powdered sugar) and it was tinted with “Electric Green” food coloring. It’s super vibrant and pretty – I love it!

      Reply
  2. Devorah

    Wow! Look amazing! Can you give me the recipe for the cookies? I would love to make this for my housewarming party. Can they be frozen in Advance?

    Reply
    • Angelica

      Thanks, Deborah! The recipe I use for my sugar cookies is this one from Bake at 350. And, yes, they can can absolutely be frozen in advance! đŸ™‚ I do it all the time. Just stack them in a ziplock freezer bag and place them in a tupperware container. To unthaw, just leave them out on the counter overnight at room temp while still in all of their containers/wrapping and they’ll be great.

      Reply
  3. Stephanie

    What size cookie cutter did you use for the house and where did you get it? I cannot find a house cookie cutter anywhere! ):

    Reply
    • Angelica

      The cookie cutter is about 4-inches across and 3-inches high. I’ve had it for a while, so I unfortunately don’t remember where I got it. I always pick up random cookie cutters here and there, so it could have been anywhere đŸ™‚ There should be lots available online, though. Might be the way to go.

      Reply
  4. Kim

    With your royal icing recipe, how much does it make for you? What about the taste? Do you flavor it with vanilla? TY

    Reply
    • Angelica

      Hi Kim – I use usually make one batch of royal icing per 12 cookies I’m decorating. It’s truthfully enough for decorating just over a dozen, but I tend to play it safe and count on decorating 12.

      I don’t flavor the icing, but I know lots of people do with and love it. I find that the vanilla-almond flavor of the sugar cookies is totally tasty, so I don’t add any flavor to the icing. It totally tastes great as-is.

      Reply
  5. Lindsey

    These are beautiful! How long do you need to wait to pipe the words? Do you need to wait until the flooded icing is completely hard or can it still be in the drying stage? Thank you!

    Reply
    • Angelica

      Thanks, Lindsey! I wait until the flooded icing is completely dry before adding the words on top (several hours or overnight). This keeps the letters from sinking down into the flooded area, plus helps minimize possible color bleeding between the letters and the flooded area.

      Reply
    • Angelica

      Thank you so much, Victoria! Yup, I do sell cookies. Because of the kind of baking I do, however, I’m only able to sell to local folks here in the bay area.

      Reply
    • Angelica

      I use Ateco size 00 or 000 for nearly all my writing, but I believe these were done with a size 1. I’ve gone with smaller piping tips as I’ve done more decorating.

      Reply
  6. Cheryl Locke

    Did you use the Kopy Kake with a certain font? If so, what font did you use?

    Reply
    • Angelica

      Yup, I used a projector when I decorated these cookies. I don’t have the original file, but I believe “home” is plain old Arial. Not sure about the “sweet,” but any script font should look awesome.

      Reply
  7. Erica

    Hi,
    I’m having a house warming in January 2019, are you able to prepare the house cookie and the key and ship. If so, what’s the minimum amount for ordering and the price? Thanks Erica

    Reply
    • TroubleBaker

      Hi Erica – I’m happy that you liked the cookies, but I unfortunately don’t ship cookies. All of the orders I’m able to fulfill are for pick up from me in Oakland or local in-person delivery. Best of luck on your cookie search!

      Reply

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