Fabulous Fall Cookies

 The cooler fall months of the year are wonderful for baking cookies. Cinnamon, Ginger, Raisins and Chocolate combine to remind us of our favorite classic cookie flavors such as Snickerdoodles, Chocolate Chip and Oatmeal Raisin. When I walk into the Cookie Bakery in the early morning the aroma of these cookies baking puts a smile on my face.

We start to get busy after a lazy summer and  plans are starting to come together for our busiest time of year, Christmas! ( Holiday Cookie Gifts will preview soon) But for now, we are enjoying decorating Sugar Cookies in the shapes of leaves and acorns and baking our featured Cookie of the Month, Ginger Chocolate Chunk. Shown below, we've added both dark chocolate and semi-sweet chocolate chunks to a classic molasses cookie which is then rolled in sugar and baked. Out of this world yummy, this cookie stays soft in the middle but has a nice crunch on the outside.

 Once the cookies are baked and decorated, the fun continues with creative Gift Packaging. Fall Colors of chocolate brown, ginger, golden yellows and burgundy reds are perfect for any gift occasion from a Happy Birthday Cookie Gift to a special Thank You Gift.

    Warm orange, golden yellow and chocolate browns combine beautifully for a delightful autumn color palette. Stacks of hand decorated sugar leaf cookies tied with Bakers Twine from the Twinery.

     Who wouldn't enjoy Coffee and Cookies on a sunny but cool Autumn Day!

We love our new mini fall sugar cookies. So cute and bite-size, they are hard to resist!

   Fall Cookie Gifts for Delivery
  

Pink Cookie Buffet




Pink Cookie Buffet

We designed this cookie table for my daughter's Summer Wedding this past June, 2012. Pink & Silver were the colors of choice. The monogram cookies were fun to do, hearts are always pretty & the little tiered cakes were time-consuming, but so cute! My favorite were the dark chocolate cookies with our double chocolate batter rolled in sugar and topped with a hershey kiss! We used a backdrop of pink, silver and ivory double satin ribbons for a elegant ribbon wall that really brings the colors together.



Cookie Sandwiches with fillings of vanilla creme, peanut butter creme and pink strawberry buttercream were a hit with this Cookie Table. Pink M&M chocolate chip cookies, zebra hershey kiss cookies and mini Chocolate Brownies in cute paper wraps added to the pink theme. We also included plenty of buttery Shortbread Cookies, classic chocolate chip cookies and a total of 12 other flavors from cranberry white chocolate to toffee almond and peanut butter with Reese's Pieces ( the brides favorite). It really was a feast of cookies!

New Cookie Gift Boxes

We are introducing new gift boxes this fall, a return to our original handmade look, back to basics.

We're so excited to offer these new natural kraft bakery style boxes filled with a natural kraft fill and wrapped with assorted ribbons, bakery twine and raffias. We've discovered a paper ribbon from  Paper Jacks a wonderful online company offering both paper ribbons and charming labels to make gift packaging fun and unique!

 We were looking for a gift wrapping idea to add an element of personalization and charm to our homemade cookies that we bake from scratch and package for gift giving. It's so exciting to start working with new packaging ideas and we plan to use a lot of this wonderful paper ribbon this fall and Holiday season!

 I just love the ability to make each gift box of cookies unique and personal for each special occasion. When our customers order a Cookie Delivery , we want to wow the recipient not only with the fresh baked cookies inside the boxes, but also with the first impression of the gift box. We use a lot of chocolate brown ribbons and I love the many designs we've been able to come up with so far. Watch for our homemade Christmas Cookies this year in our new handmade packaging!

Cookie Sandwiches

  We baked Cookie Sandwiches for my daughter's wedding last month and they were a hit! Chewy oatmeal cookies filled with vanilla buttercream flavored with just a hint of Cinnamon, Peanut Butter Cookies with creamy peanut butter buttercream filling and my favorite, Triple Chocolate Cookies with pink strawberry filling. I should have taken a photo of the chocolate ones, but just didn't get a chance before they were gone!

Cookie Sandwiches with Buttercream Filling



More Cookie Sandwiches





Cookie Sandwiches will be coming this fall at Country Cupboard Cookies!

Cookie Sandwiches are easy to make and a great way to create some wonderful flavor combinations. Take 2 favorite cookies, use a piping bag with a large tip, fill with your favorite buttercream frosting and top with 2nd cookie. I like the ooze of the frosting so I am generous with the filling. Get creative with your buttercream. I've added cinnamon for a spice cookie, peanut butter for chocolate cookies, cut up peanut butter cups, dried berries, mint with a touch a green food coloring, etc. Just be careful to use a large enough tip on your pastry bag if you add ingredients such as fruit and candies to avoid clogging. 

We plan on offering these cookie sandwiches later this fall and for the holiday season this year. I'm picturing a cute handcrafted kraft gift box with bakery twine and filled with assorted cookie sandwiches in flavors of gingerspice, double chocolate and peanut butter. We'll see what we can come up with this year for a new Holiday Cookie Gift. Yes, it is time to brainstorm for Christmas Cookie Gifts!

Black & White Wedding Cookie Table

Wedding Cookie Tables are very popular here in the Pittsburgh, PA area. We think traditional and homemade cookies such as chocolate chip, snickerdoodle, oatmeal raisin and peanut butter cookies are wonderful for any event but decorated sugar cookies can add just the right touch of color and elegance to any Cookie Table. It's a great way to add texture, color and your own creative ideas.

Contemporary Black & White Cookie Table

Simple & delicious monogram sugar cookies

 Recently my niece was married and the colors chosen for her wedding were black & white.
 Contemporary and chic. Even her gown had splashes of black, just gorgeous. The bridesmaids carried gerbera daisy flowers with hot colors of purple, red, green and orange which added just the right touch of color!

Tuxedo & Bride Sugar Cookies

These tuxedo cookies are some of my favorite wedding sugar cookies. Simple design and yet so elegant. Decorated Sugar Cookies can add just the right touch of color to any dessert or cookie table.

Barnyard Sugar Cookies

We created these barnyard sugar cookies for a Barn wedding taking place this weekend.

Along with chocolate chip, toffee chocolate chip, snickerdoodle, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter, cranberry white chocolate, salted caramel and a few other specialty gourmet cookies, we wanted to add an assortment of fun and delicious cookies for the wedding guests to enjoy.

These sugar cookies are small bitesize cookies, the red barn is a larger 3.5 inch cookie. We flooded and piped them with royal icing so they will withstand the high temperatures of 90 degrees we are expecting this week in Southwestern Pennsylvania. I see some improvements we would make the next time we decorate these cute farm animal sugar cookies, but for a first try, we think they are cute. They will add a touch of whimsy to the wedding cookie table. I'll add a few more of our wedding cookie creations after the wedding!

Send some love with homemade cookies for Mother's Day!

Hearts & Flowers for Mother's Day

It's a little early in the season for sunflowers, but not cookie sunflowers.The colors are so warm and I love baking them, so we are offering them for Mother's Day this year 2012.

All of our Mother's Day Cookie Gifts are packaged in cute natural kraft gift boxes and tied with assorted raffias in pretty spring colors. We also use gorgeous grosgrain ribbons for the larger gift boxes in springtime colors such as orange cream, raspberry and lime green. Perfect for a gift box of flower sugar cookies!W                  

Daisy and Butterflies are also two of my favorite sugar cookies to decorate in the spring and summer months. Almost any color scheme will work, for example these colors of turquoise, golden yellow and chocolate brown. For other examples of different colors of butterfly cookies, visit our website Country Cupboard Cookies

    We bake farmhouse- style wholesome cookies also such as Chocolate Chip Cookies, Oatmeal Walnut  Raisin and Peanut Butter Chocolate cookies baked from scratch using creamy butter, unbleached flour and whole eggs. They go so well with the hand decorated sugar cookies and are an ideal gourmet Mother's Day treat. We ship nationwide via UPS or FedEx and the cookies are fresh baked, packaged and shipped the same day.

Hearts & Flowers Sugar Cookies just in time for Mother's Day!

We flooded these pink sugar hearts with light pink royal icing. After drying them for 4 hours, we added an outline of royal icing using a #3 tip ( use larger tip if you want more sugar ) then dipped them in hot pink sugar crystals. So sweet.



Hearts & Flowers Cookie Gift

 



Pittsburgh Sugar Cookies



Cookie Greetings from the 'Burgh

Country Cupboard Cookies is located in Pittsburgh, PA but we ship our fresh baked gourmet cookies all over the United States. We love hearing from customers who are originally from the 'Burgh but now have moved away. We try to take time to chat while taking their order and it's always a good conversation. Our Pittsburgh Black and Gold colors are legendary here and we thought fellow Pittsburghers would like to share the goodness with friends and family. We've designed a way to  order a Birthday Cookie Delivery or a Thank you message to someone who has moved away from Pittsburgh but would still love to enjoy a few hometown sweets! We're wrapping our select Pittsburgh Gourmet Gifts in black & gold boxes & ribbons.  The fun and delicious sugar cookies are decorated in Black,Gold and White and can be included with the homemade cookies and brownies. 

Decorated Sugar Black & Gold Cookies from Pittsburgh

We will be adding new decorated cookie designs  this year to promote our new line of Pittsburgh Cookies. The whimsical Black & Gold Gingies were a hit last Christmas and we plan to offer them throughout the year and of course this year for a special gift in our Holiday Cookie Gifts section. Keep on eye on the Pittsburgh Gifts Cookie Section of our website for new ideas and enjoy!

Let the Baking Begin!

Lots of cookie decorating to do today. Sugar Cookies for the holiday season & gingerbread cookies are baking today and keeping us busy! I had to scrape the ice off my windshield this morning in Pittsburgh, so I thought I'd show some of our mitten cookies. Wish I had a pair of mittens on this morning while I was scraping away at 6 am, but now the sun is shining and it should warm up today.

 We're baking Black & Gold gingerbread cookies this year for our local Pittsburgh fans. For those of you not from the Burgh, these are our favorite colors around Pittsburgh, especially when the Steelers and Penquins are playing! Sports are BIG around this city. I wonder about introducing Black and Gold into the Holiday season as I am mostly a Christmas traditionalist but well, they are only cookies! And they really are cute.

 Red & white are so bright and festive during the Holiday Season. These candy cane brownies are made from a deep dish chocolate brownie with chunks of Belgian white chocolate. After the brownie is baked and cooled, we then melt more white chocolate, drizzle it on the brownies and then add the perfect touch with crushed peppermint candy canes. Decorated Sugar Cookies in the shapes of candy canes are also included in the Holiday Cookie Box along with an assortment of homemade cookies from Chocolate Chip to Peanut Butter and Cranberry White Chocolate.

And finally to remind us all of what is coming...

Thanksgiving Cookie Greetings

We have to start planning the Christmas Holiday Season at our bakery, Country Cupboard Cookies in August every year. To be honest, I start thinking about the next year's Holiday season during December while we are still baking and packing for that year. I know that sounds confusing, but the Christmas Season is our bread and butter for the whole year. I wish it weren't, I wish we could bake more consistently throughout the year, but the reality is that is that those 3 weeks of December is when we ship 30% of our gifts for the entire year! If we didn't have the holiday gift season each year, we wouldn't be in business.

 BUT.....I love Thanksgiving and I don't want to miss a chance to bake with all the wonderful flavors of fall. Oatmeal Walnut Raisin cookies, Toffee chip cookies, deep dish fudge brownies, Snickerdoodles rolled in cinnamon and sugar, and Cranberry Orange Pecan cookies all make our bakery smell so fantastic this time of year. We 're hoping that we can send out lots of thank you cookie gifts this Thanksgiving! Take some time to bake something this fall, it's one of the best times of the year to enjoy fresh baked goods.

Halloween Gingerbread & Sugar Cookies

 We've started decorating Gingerbread Cookies for the Holiday Christmas Season, but got distracted by Halloween. Red & Green colors started to look all the same, so we mixed up some orange and Black & yellow. Pumpkin head gingerbreads, dogs with orange and black bandanas, then Danielle got the idea to do gingerbread dressed in Halloween costumes. We ended up with pirates, dracula, mummy ( my favorite ) , bats, jack-o-lanterns, bats, etc. Lots of laughs with this production!

 We're shipping our Halloween decorated sugar cookies next week. What a cute way to say Trick or Treat!

We will continue to think red & green next week for our line of gourmet holiday cookies, but this was a nice break. These Trick or Treat Cookie boxes include both fresh baked assorted cookies such as Chocolate Chip, Double Chocolate, Snickerdoodle, but also 2 of the decorated halloween sugar cookies. A great choice for a Cookie Delivery and we do ship Nationwide.

Take a peek at Christmas Cookie Gifts!

We've been designing and creating new Holiday sugar Cookies  for the 2011 Holiday Season. Of course, our delectable gingerbread cookies are back this year with their happy smiles and festive colors. We are also decorating Christmas Sugar Tree Cookies, Ornaments, Stockings, Christmas Cupcake Cookies, candycane cookies and so much more.

I really like these candy cane and peppermint candy circle cookies. These particular hand decorated sugar and gingerbread cookies are included in our Holiday Sweets Cookie Gift Box, a gift designed for a sweet lover on your Christmas shopping List. Each selection of 12 cookies are wrapped individually and packed in a cute natural kraft gift box with holiday twines and raffias. The gift boxes ship beautifully anywhere in the U.S. and make a wonderful Holiday Cookie Delivery!

Our bakery has the aroma of Christmas spices already with ginger, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. We're looking forward to the cookie baking this Holiday season! Take a moment and visit us online today! http://www.countrycupboardcookies.com/

Decorated Sugar Cookies for Fall!

We brought out the fall colors today and they put a smile on our faces! Fall is our favorite time to bake cookies. The weather is starting to cool and it's before the crazy and hectic Holiday Baking Season. We look forward to baking our decorated gingerbread cookies for Christmas gifts, but for right now, fall leaves and acorns are on the menu. We baked these decorated fall cookies using our favorite sugar cookie recipe which is so easy to roll and is made with butter, sugar, eggs , flour and pure vanilla. If you want a touch of spice for your fall cookies, just add a teaspoon of cinnamon or 1/2 tsp of ginger when mixing your batter. Also, after baking and decorating, a sprinkle of colored sugar will give a nice crunch and we find cover any minor mistakes with decorating!

Love the tie dye look of these fall maple leaves! We used the technique of 2 colors of flood icing ( your thinner icing) applied to the cookie then allow the icing to run together using a icing spatula or toothpick to swirl nicely. Another technique is to flood the cookie with your main color, the orange in this case, then add a few drops of yellow flood right away. Use a toothpick to swirl. If you use this technique for tie-dye, be careful to add a little less flood on the first color than usual or your cookie will overflow.

                                               
 We may be using this wonderful and colorful Baker's Twine from The Twinery this year for packaging some of our Cookie Gifts for Fall and the upcoming Holiday Season. I received this sample pack from the company and I just adore the homespun look. They offer so many gorgeous colors and we find the twine easy to work with. I think it makes our cookies look Simply delicious!

Lots of birthdays will occur this fall season and so we've decided to add some of our specialty Birthday Cookie Gifts with fall colors. Our acorn cookies need some work in the design, but we will be working on that, it's only September! Hope everyone enjoys the fall as much as we do here in Pennsylvania and happy baking!

Taking a break from Cookies

Baking is my passion in the kitchen. And baking cookies is my favorite. Farmhouse style, wholesome cookies made from scratch and filled with nuts, chocolate, fruits and spices. But sometimes, I still bake a pie or attempt cupcakes. Cupcakes and cakes are difficult for me, I'm not sure why. Maybe I'm so tuned in to creaming and mixing cookie batters that I just don't make the transition to cakes well.

I'm better at baking bread than baking cute cupcakes however. I love to get up in the morning and decide to bake a loaf of bread. I've baked all types of bread from Italian white to wholewheat to potato bread. I've baked sourdough breads, homemade pizzas and yummy rolls. I've done my share of kneading and also used a bread machine for years. This summer, I discovered the refrigerator bread or " bread in 5 minutes" This bread recipe has been around for awhile, I'm not sure how I missed it, maybe I was too busy kneading and rising bread. And I'm not going to give up all my bread recipes that require half a day to complete either. But when you want a super easy, quick idea for artisan bread, this recipe is amazing. I like to mix up a batch for 4 loaves, and bake one every other day. The bread dough will keep in the fridge for 2 weeks.

There is something about fresh bread coming out of the oven that is hard to resist. I have tried 2 recipes, both the white and also the whole wheat. I know there is a cookbook available, which I would love to try http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/ or this website is wonderful also. I still can't believe I took so long to find these recipes. So if you need a break from chocolate chip cookies this summer, I think baking bread is a great adventure. Here's a link to the recipe, Bread Recipe in 5 minutes with fantastic instructions and photos. Enjoy!

And now on to baking up a batch of  Cowboy Cookies, mixed with oatmeal, chocolate chips, pecans & M&M candies. Yum!

Red, White & Blue Cookies

The Fourth of July summer holiday is coming soon so I thought I'd post some a few of our stars and stripes decorated sugar cookies. The colors of red, white and blue always remind me of summer, the colors just seem right for a hot summer's day. I like the simplicity of these decorated sugar cookies in shapes of stars. We are baking the stars in different sizes, frosting with royal icing and then rimming with sanding sugars. These cookies can be made easily at  home, star cookie cutters are easy to find and if you don't want to bother with royal icing, just use a simple buttercream icing and add some sprinkles. The buttercream frosting we use here is so easy!

Easy Buttercream Frosting

2 LB Confectioner's Sugar

1/4 cup ( 1/2 stick ) melted Butter

1/2 cup Water ( approximate)

1/2 tsp Pure Vanilla

Mix the melted butter in a bowl with the sugar. Just mix until the butter is coating the sugar. Add the water slowly and beat until you like the consistency for frosting. Beat for 1-2 min  for a creamy mixture. Add vanilla or any other flavoring you may like. This frosting is so easy to spread and sets up nicely at room temperature, but you can also place the cookies in the refrigerator to help set your icing. The key to this recipe is the amount of water you add, add slowly and if you add too much, you can always add more sugar.

I really like the look of white icing with colored sprinkles, but you could also use food dye to add some color to your frosting, just allow for the added liquid. Food dyes will thin your icing somewhat.

We will be shipping our 4th of July Cookies next week. You can place your order online now and we'll ship the cookies when baked. This is a festive gift for a fourth of July summer picnic or to ship to friends and family. Visit our website for more ideas for your holiday gift giving today! We bake our cookies fresh daily and ship Nationwide!

Enjoy your summer get-to-gethers and cook outs! This is one tradition that seems to have remained in our lives despite our everyday "I'm so busy" schedules. Everyone enjoys a backyard cook out and getting together with friends and families. I love when everyone brings a favorite dish or dessert. You know people will prepare a dish that is one of their best, so the food is always great! Hope you can add some new recipes to your file this summer, I  know I've already picked up a few, starting with the great 5 bean salad I enjoyed yesterday at my niece's grad party!

A Father's Day Cookie Delivery

Father's Day is June 19th, Sunday this year, 2011. We are starting to make our boxes and plan our baking for next week when we start to ship cookies for this special day. Cookies and brownies are a perfect gourmet treat to send for a Happy Father's Day message. If you have time, mix up a batch of cookies, most men love classic chocolate chip cookies, what could be easier. A plate of homemade cookies would go well with any other gifts or card you may want to give the special guy in your life. My dad loves Oatmeal Raisin, I know I'll be taking him a batch when I go to visit!

           If you are creative and want to try your skill at cookie decorating, shirts with #1 Dad on them would be fun especially for children to design. We used a "onesie" cookie cutter, then just cut off the bottoms with a knife prior to baking for these cute shirt decorated sugar cookies. We will be decorating them daily during this week and next so we'll have lots of variety to add to our Father's Day cookie gifts.