Missionary Cookies

I made these missionary cookies last year for a Valentines Day party.  My nephew Douglas was receiving his mission call on Valentine’s Day and was planning on opening his mission call with all his close friends and family present.  My sister in law ordered these cookies and requested a butter-based icing.  It is possible to decorate with buttercream icing but the cookies will not have the crisp edges of Royal icing.  As you can see above some of the icing did not stay on the cookies and the letters are less than perfect.  Overall, these missionary cookies were a perfect combination of delicious flavor and decorated sugar cookies.  I decided to make missionary conversation hearts to combine the two themes.  My favorite cookie of the set ins the heart shaped CTR cookie.

Keep reading for more details on how I made these cookies – along with a link to the original buttercream icing recipe.

Step 1 – Missionary cookies – Prepare cookie dough and bake cookies.

For this set I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe, found at this link.  Just a heads up, even when this dough is chilled it tends to spread.  I usually only use this recipe for shapes like a heart, where it doesn’t matter if the shape expands and slightly warps.  These missionary cookies are all about flavor, not looks.

Step 2 – Missionary cookies – Prepare icing

As I explained earlier, my sister-in-law did not want royal icing.  She want cookies with rich buttecream icing.  Here is the recipe I started out with:

Frosting for decorating:

Melt:
1 tablespoon butter

Add and beat until smooth:
3/4 cup confectioner’s sugar (sifted)
1 tablespoon milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon lemon juice

Add food coloring if desired. Yields 1/3 cup

This recipe, along with so many other wonderful glaze and Royal icing variations can be found at this website – www.annclark.com – for the icing recipes look here.  She also sells wonderful cookie cutters.  There is also a plethora of rolled cookie recipes, found here.

When I made these I did not have lemon juice on hand (of course).  I started with 10 Tablespoons butter, mixed with 10 Tablespoons milk.  To this I added 2 pounds of sifted powder sugar and two Tablespoons butter.  From there I made separate colors, and with each color I made a thick frosting for outlining and lettering, along with a thin icing for flooding the cookies.

Step 3 – Missionary Cookies – Decorate Cookies

As with other decorated cookies, I worked on one cookie at a time, outlining with the thick buttercream icing and flooding with a thinner icing.  I had to be careful not to add too much icing when flooding the cookies because this icing has a tendency to fall off the cookie.  Blend edges with a toothpick or a scribe.

When the icing has set (at least 20 minutes or so) I added the lettering to the missionary cookies.  I purchased a large bakers box from the grocery store to delivery these.  Although I allowed the cookies to dry overnight I was not sure if the icing was firm enough to stack them.

Well… it turns out Douglas had the wrong day receiving his missionary call letter and the family had to postpone the party.  My sister-in-law put these cookies in the freezer and her kids enjoyed really tasty sugar cookies in their lunches for several weeks.  🙂