Decorated Chocolate Sugar Cookies for Easter

It's full swing into baking sweets for me now! Woohoo :) I'm technically still on bootcamp until at least tomorrow, which means I can't taste anything I bake until then. That's okay because I just got to make and decorate sugar cookies so in a strange kind of way, I feel somewhat satisfied. I miss eating sweets, sure, but I also missed baking and especially decorating bakes. I get to be crafty and creative whenever I bake pretty things and this month has been simply boring for me. Lame, actually :(

I feel somewhat alive again after making my Easter cookies. Ah :) It's funny because I didn't even make my first sugar cookie until a couple of years ago. I wasn't even interested in eating them back then. I was only drawn to them by how lovely they looked. Then I realized they were not only pretty, but they also tasted a lot like shortbread and I love shortbread! They were challenging to make but once I got the hang of things, I was addicted. I'm so glad I started baking there because after making and decorating sugar cookies, everything else just seems easy.

These cookies took forever to do! Well, at least a good half day! I made 9 cookie pops, 10 large cookies and at least 30 small to medium cookies. The cookie pops were both thick and large. Each cookie pop would probably be equivalent to around 4 small to medium sized cookies. The cookies had to be really thick so that I could insert the cookie sticks in them. I forgot how thick those sticks were so I busted plenty of cookies before I finally gave in and made them super thick. Gah.

These are more like giant cookie pops! Heavy too.

I LOVE these wooden baskets from Williams-Sonoma.

My 4 year old and little kitchen helper :)

We also painted egg cartons for the presentation. Chocolates, anyone?

The cookies I made were the same ones that I made for Valentines. Sweetapolita has my favorite dark chocolate sugar cookie recipe! Everything on these Easter cookies is royal icing. I especially liked how the cookie pops turned out. I wasn't too sure about them at first. When I piped out the bunnies onto parchment paper, they didn't look as cute as my drawing. But then when they were dry and I attached them onto each iced cookie pop, they looked so much better! However, the parchment paper wasn't completely flat when I piped my bunnies, nor were the surfaces of my already iced cookie pops so when I attached them together, the bunnies totally stuck out. Oh well! It actually makes it look more 3D. Lol. Maybe next time I could try piping my image directly on a silicon baking sheet. It might be too hard to trace my design though.

3D Bunny cookie pops.

Chocolate sugar cookies decorated as speckled eggs.

For my small to medium cookies, I decided to do something simple and do speckled eggs. I first saw them on Bake at 350 and thought they were really cool. Instead of using my fingers though, I just used a small paint brush to flicker and splash the specks on them. It actually wasn't too messy. Then for my large cookies, I had to make chicks. You can't have eggs without chicks, right? :)

Happy Easter! If you are fortunate to be in the Vancouver area like me, this weekend is going to be a gorgeous one. We can actually have an Easter hunt outside and be guaranteed dry and warm weather. How awesome is that?! :)