Easter Cookie Recipes and Specials

Because it's another baking season for all us cookie fans, and we've found some great new Easter recipes and baking supplies, today we bring you this special edition of the Christmas-Cookies.com newsletter. No, it's not Christmas, but we are all baking special recipes just the same!

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I N T H I S I S S U E

Easter Baking Supplies
Recipe: Chocolate Easter Eggs
Recipe: Quick-as-a-Bunny Easter Egg Nests

Recipe: Our Favorite Sugar Cookie
Tip: Decorating Sugar Cookies
More Easter Cookies, Cakes, and Candies

E A S T E R B A K I N G S U P P L I E S

7-piece Easter Cookie Cutter Set $8.95 Buy	Easter Cookie Decorating Set $24.95 Buy	3-piece Easter Sprinkle Assortment $11.95 Buy	3-piece Pastel-colored Dragee Assortment $26.00 Buy
3-piece Easter Copper Cookie Cutter Set $24.95 Buy	6-piece Spring Sanding Sugar Assortment $22.95 Buy	Deluxe Egg Decorating Set $19.95 Buy	Easter Treats by Jill O'Connor Easter recipes and crafts $14.95 Buy

L O T S M O R E E A S T E R P R O D U C T S !
cookie cutters sprinkles colored sugars candy-making cake pans cupcake liners
click here

E A S T E R R E C I P E S

CHOCOLATE EASTER EGGS

When opened, these eggs will have a white cream filling with a yellow center.

Makes about 24

1 cup butter, softened
2 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons vanilla
1 can sweetened condensed milk
10 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon yellow food coloring
1 pound semi-sweet chocolate

Beat together butter, salt and vanilla until light and fluffy. Add milk, beat in powdered sugar. Blend until the mixture is stiff. Dust with a little extra powdered sugar and knead with hands until smooth.

Set aside a little more than 2/3 of the mixture. Knead yellow food coloring into the remaining mixture until uniform in color. Divide into 24 equal parts and shape into round balls. Divide the white mixture into 24 equal parts and mold the white mixture around the yellow balls to form an egg shape. Dry at room temperature on paper towels for 24 hours.

Melt chocolate in the top of a double boiler until smooth. Dip eggs in chocolate and allow to harden on a cooling rack with waxed paper placed underneath. Keep refrigerated.

QUICK-AS-A-BUNNY EASTER EGG NESTS

A fun and pretty no-bake treat. The kids will love helping with this one!

Makes about 16

4 tablespoons butter
4 cups marshmallows
5 cups Rice Krispies cereal
1/2 cup shredded coconut, tinted green
Miniature marshmallows, jelly beans, chocolate eggs, etc.

Line a baking sheet with waxed paper. Melt butter in saucepan over low heat. Add marshmallows and stir until melted. Cook 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Add Rice Krispies and coconut, stir until thoroughly mixed. On the prepared baking sheet, shape mixture into sixteen 3-inch rounds, making an indentation in the center of each round so that it makes a nest shape. Put the baking sheet in the refrigerator and chill the nests thoroughly. Fill cooled nests with miniature marshmallows, jelly beans, chocolate eggs, etc.

OUR FAVORITE SUGAR COOKIES

We think Easter is the second-best time of the year to make and decorate sugar cookies. We love decorating them with the muted pinks and greens of spring, and using the many fun Easter sprinkles that are available right now.

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

Blend butter & sugar until fluffy. Add egg & vanilla, mix until just combined. Add flour & baking powder in intervals. Dough will seem as if doesn't have enough moisture but continue to mix with mixer until combined. Shape into disk & wrap in plastic wrap & put in refrigerator until firm. Preheat oven to 375 F. Roll out dough between 2 sheets of waxed paper to desired thickness (thicker cookies will be softer and chewier, thinner cookies will be more crispy). Cut out with cookie cutters and place on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake for 7-8 minutes. Remove from oven, let cool for one minute and then transfer to wire rack. Allow cookie sheet to cool thoroughly before placing uncooked dough on it. Decorate cookies with Royal Icing and sprinkles. Can be stored in freezer undecorated for 2 months.

B A K I N G T I P S

Tips on decorating Easter cookies
Many first time cookie bakers ask for tips and instructions on decorating cookies. Well that’s a tall order because there are as many ways to decorate cookies as there are cookies! Here are a few guidelines for novices and experienced bakers alike to help you generate your own ideas for cooking decorating.

Decorating cookies before baking
Cookies can be decorated before baking with materials that withstand the heat of baking. Some things that you can place on your cookies before baking are:

- colored sugars or natural sugars such as pearl sugar
- jimmies, non-pareils, silver and gold dragées, and other sprinkles
- raisins and dried fruits such as cranberries
- nuts

These items can be placed on top of almost any cookie to dress it up a bit and give it a more festive appearance.

Paint a masterpiece
You can also paint your cookies before baking them. Make an edible food paint out of an egg yolk mixed with a few drops of food coloring and paint the cookies with a clean paintbrush. The paint will dry while baking and give the cookie a colorful, glazed appearance. This is a fun activity for kids!

A bit of trompe l’oeil
The folks at Better Homes and Gardens have a creative recipe for Colored Cream Dough which is a dough of frosting consistency that can be piped onto cookies with a pastry bag fitted with a writing or star tip, and then baked. The result is a cookie that looks like it has been frosted but the frosting is baked on and hard.

Decorating cookies after baking
Decorating cookies after baking them requires that you apply some kind of liquid-based substance that will adhere to the baked cookie, or that will act as a glue to attach other items. Usually, this takes the form of frosting, icing, or melted chocolate.

Frosting vs. Icing
There is a big difference between frosting and icing. Frosting is thick and holds shapes like rosettes and shells like those you see piped around the edges of a birthday cake. It remains soft to the touch and has a creamy texture, and most people think it tastes better because of the creamy buttery flavor. Icing, on the other hand, is a thinner, more liquid substance, and as it dries it thins out, becomes very smooth across the surface of your cookie, and hardens. This is the icing to use for the most beautiful, professional results.

Working with frosting
You can use frosting in two ways. One way is to simply use a knife or rubber spatula to spread the frosting across the whole surface of your cookie. The other way is to place the frosting in a pastry or decorating bag fitted with a small tip and piping out thin lines or rosettes of icing onto the cookie. Either way, once the frosting has been applied to the cookie you can then further embellish it by using colored sugars, non-pareils, or any of the decorating items mentioned in the Decorating Before Baking section above. We have a delicious recipe for Buttercream Frosting. See detailed instructions on piping frosting.

Working with icing
Icing is a little more difficult to work with but its smooth surface produces the most beautiful results! Icing should always be piped onto a cookie because it will run off the edges if spread with a knife. Once iced you can apply silver dragées, or other sprinkles just as mentioned with the frosting above, before it hardens. We have an excellent recipe for Royal Icing. There is also a recipe for Powdered Sugar Icing that dries less hard than Royal Icing and has a shiny surface. Martha Stewart's website features an excellent article on how to pipe icing onto cookies for professional-looking results.

See our huge list of cookies you can decorate with frosting and icing.

Melted chocolate
Just about any cookie can be embellished simply by dipping it in chocolate or drizzling chocolate over it. You can even dress up the everyday chocolate chip cookie for gift-giving or serving at parties. Melting chocolate is a simple process, but a few rules must be followed in order to make it a success. For Easter, try using white chocolate tinted in pastel shades with food coloring. Use the gel, paste or powdered kind of food color, because the liquid drops may make the chocolate seize up..

What you need
You can either use chocolate chips or baking chocolate (the kind that comes in 1-ounce squares) and the same process applies whether you use dark chocolate or white chocolate. A small amount of shortening should be added at the ratio of 2 tablespoons shortening for 1 cup of chocolate chips or chopped up baking chocolate.

Double boiler
Place chocolate and shortening in the top half of a double boiler or in a metal bowl that has been placed on top of a saucepan filled with hot water. The water must be very hot, but not boiling, because the steam generated by boiling water could get moisture into the melting chocolate which makes it curdle. Allow the chocolate to melt over the hot water and stir it occasionally until it has achieved a liquid consistency.

Microwave
Place your chocolate and shortening in a microwave safe bowl and microwave it on medium power for 1 minute. Stir. Continue microwaving 20 seconds, stir again. Keep doing this until the chocolate is almost melted. Remove it from the microwave and stir it until completely melted.

Dipping
Dip one end of your cookie, or half the cookie, or even the whole cookie into the melted chocolate. Set the cookie on a wire rack to let the chocolate harden. If you wish, you can sprinkle chopped nuts, coconut, or non-pareils over the melted chocolate before it hardens.

Drizzling
Scrape melted chocolate into a ziplock baggie. With a sharp scissors, snip off a very small corner of the baggie. Drizzle top of cookies with zig-zags of melted chocolate. Cool until chocolate is set.

M O R E E A S T E R R E C I P E S

Birds Nests
Coconut Nests
Crispy Easter Egg Nests
Crunchy Easter Nests
Easter Lily Cones
Easter Story Cookies

Fudge Easter Eggs
Koulourakia
Meringue Nests
Peanut Butter Eggs
Pope's Cake

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