How to Make Baseball Cookies:
I use this great recipe that I found for cut out cookies: No Fail Sugar Cookies, which originally came from Kitchengifts.com. I make giant five-inch diameter Baseball Cookies- using a tupperware bowl as my cut-out tool. I use KitchenGift’s tip for rolling out dough without the mess: Rather than wait for your cookie dough to chill, take the freshly made dough and place a glob between two sheets of parchment paper. Roll it out to the desired thickness, then place the dough and paper on a cookie sheet and pop it into the refrigerator. Continue rolling out your dough between sheets of paper until you have used it all. By the time you are finished, the first batch will be completely chilled and ready to cut. Re-roll leftover dough and repeat the process. Add added bonus is that you are not adding any additional flour to your cookies. This process works WONDERFULLY!
Martha Stewart’s Royal Icing works really well for decorator cookies. I make the whole batch and then divide it up into 3 tupperware bowls. Place the lids on each until ready to use or they’ll begin to harden. With icing tub #1, I pipe all of the edges on first and let those dry a little bit. Then I thin out icing tub #1 slightly and used it to flood the centers. If you give it enough time, it hardens nicely.
To make nice, even arcs for the stitching on the baseball cookies, I use the edge of the same tupperware that I use to cut out the cookies to make impressions.
With icing tub #2, I mix in 1 bottle of red food coloring to get a nice dark red color. If you use too little, you’ll end up with magenta stitches. Boys don’t like magenta! Then I pipe red icing into the impressions, and also add the stitches.
Icing tub #3 is mixed with blue food coloring. Each Baseball Cookie can be personalized with a name and a number. I make nice, thick 5-inch cookies… and I end up with about 18. It’s nice to have a couple extra ones because it’s inevitable that one of them will get messed up at some point during the decorating process. If you’ve got 24 hours to let these dry completely, you’ll end up with icing that hardens nicely. I’m sometimes in a bit of a rush when I make these, so I use a table fan to dry them (and that works just fine too.) Each cookie can be slipped into its own quart-sized baggie and they are good to go. Our little league final season game was a tie (happy kids all around!) The boys loved their Baseball Cookies. And they especially enjoyed the fact that they were personalized. The moms and dads who stole bites from their kid’s cookies noted how delicious they were. And many of the parents asked me where I purchased the cookies.
