Superhero Cookies

I am not a cook! I usually hate it and try to find the simpliest recipes I can to try to get dinner done as soon as possible. But I do like to bake on occasion and challenge myself to be a little creative with my baking.

This week Dan's grandmother turns 80! We enjoy baking cookies and sending them out to her all the way in Wyoming along with some pictures of the kiddos. For this birthday batch of cookies, I decided to try to do something special and different. Declan is SO into his superheroes right now so I thought about maybe making some superhero sugar cookies, but I didn't have any superhero cookie cutters. I looked through my box of Wilton 100 piece cookie cutter set( I got it unopened at a yard sale for $3!!!!), but I didn't see anything I could really use. I looked on Amazon, but I didn't feel like spending $5 per cookie cutter on something I probably wasn't going to use that often - so I decided to be creative!

I cut out and wiped down four pieces of cardboard off of box we had. Next I drew the symbols of Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, and the Flash. I did this freehand because we have been doing a lot with superheroes lately and I could probably do it in my sleep, but you could also print them out and trace them on the cardboard.

I followed the sugar cookie recipe that I found here and rolled out the dough. Then I placed my cardboard tracers on top of the dough and used a paring knife to cut around the shapes. 

This whole process took me about 15 minutes from start to finish - so it was easily done during naptime. I did use the circle and "s" cookie cutters from my Wilton set to add to the Superman and Green Lantern cookies. Then I laid them out on the cookie sheet and cooked them for 6 minutes. I decided to cook them on the lower end of the recommended time because I didn't want the small points on the Flash and Batman cookies to get burned. 

They came out looking great and after they cooled, it was time to decorate!!! Once again, I am on a budget and didn't want to run out to get tons of expensive cake and cookie decorating tubes of icing so I worked with what I had. I had a can of generic vanilla cake frosting and some food coloring so I quickly separated the frosting into four bowls and made my blue, green, and yellow frosting. I also found a tube of black Wilton icing that I had forgotten that I had for the Batman cookies. I used this mostly as food coloring and mixed a little bit of it in with the vanilla frosting to make black. 

To keep everything from getting too messy I decided to use sprinkles instead of frosting for the details on the Green Lantern and Superman cookies. I used my circle and "s" cookie cutters for a place holder and used some white and red sprinkles I had from my Christmas sprinkle batch to add the details.

And Done! I am super happy with how they turned out and my toddler was thrilled (when he woke up from nap haha!) ! These were super easy and cheap to do. I can't wait to try out some more designs soon!