RED VELVET SNOWFLAKE COOKIES

If you don’t have snow where you live, why not make your own snowflakes!!  And you can eat this snowflakes, too!!  The 8th recipe of 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS BAKING is Red Velvet Snowflake Cookies!!

I used to live in Denver for 6 years (Shout out to my Denver Peeps!!) and we see snow every winter.  Some winter we see a lot, some not so much.  You get use to driving in the snow (don’t hit the brakes to fast, just tap it gently), making snow forts, making snowman, making snow forts and sliding down a steep hill.  Now personally, I am not a cold weather person and winter is really not my favorite season.  But watching the snow falls to the ground while you’re snuggling your little one while drinking hot cocoa is truly one my favorite thing to do in December.

So as an homage to all things winter and snow, the 8th recipe for 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS BAKING is Red Velvet Snowflake Cookies.  So easy and fun to make with the kids.  You can use a heart cutout for February (Valentines is just a few months away!) but for December we are going to use the snowflake cookie cutter.

The recipe starts with creaming the butter, cream cheese, sugar, vanilla extract and food coloring.  In another bowl, you will combine flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda together.

After you mix them together and wrap them in plastic wrap, here comes the crucial part.  You need to refrigerate the dough 2 hours or overnight. The cookie dough need to be firm or else it will be too soft to cut with the cookie cutter and it just becomes mushy.

Lightly flour your silpat or your counter with flour.  On the corner I put about 1/2 cup of flour where I can dip my cookie cutter.  Always DIP before putting it on the dough!

After about 10 minutes in the oven, Here’s what you will get!!  Isn’t it so pretty?!

The icing part is really simple.  You just mix together sugar, meringue powder and water together until you get the right consistency.   If you want to learn how to make it, Sally’s Baking Addiction has a great tutorial on how to make the icing.

Icing cookies is a very therapeutic time for me.  Icing the cookie one by one makes me just be in the moment and not doing two things at once (I love multi-tasking!), because you can’t.  You have to stay in one place and just do one thing.  In order to make beautiful cookies, I do have a few rules of icing cookies that I’ve made for myself.

• Grab a chair and make sure you have all your stuff in front of you.
• Take a deep breath.
• DO NOT RUSH.
• Put gentle pressure on the piping bag.  The lines need to be thin so the more pressure you put, the thicker the line will be.

The patience will pay off!! Enjoy this beautiful snowflake!!!

Tips for making this RED VELVET SNOWFLAKE COOKIES :

• You can make the dough ahead of time and chill in the refrigerator.  If you are going to bake it, leave it out at room temperature for 5 minutes.
• When you are almost done cutting cookies out of 1 batch, take out the next batch out of the refrigerator so you can keep on cutting without having to leave the already cut cookies out for too long.
• I reuse the dough only one time after cutting.  If you use it more than once, it will be too dry because it has too much flour.
• If you are making this design, you will have leftover icing.  Put it in an airtight container and use it for next time.
• Wilton has many types of piping tips.  I used Wilton #3 Round Piping Tip.

Happy Baking!!