Elegant Hanukkah Cookies

The first time I ever ever made this sugar cookie recipe I was small, and made them with my mom for Hanukkah.  This cookie recipe is a holiday family tradition!  But every year I like to design new ways to use this perfect cookie dough.  A few years ago I made stenciled cookies that came out cute, but the colors were much darker than I intended.  My favorite design to date is my standing menorah made from cutters that I designed!

I wanted to make some elegant Hanukkah cookies so I chose a simple color palette of blue, white, and silver.  I used some cute shaped cutters to cut out these shapes.  This small plaque cutter is actually available in my shop.  I iced these cookies with white royal icing, and then swirled in some silver airbrush color to give them a marbleized look.  I used an amazing tutorial from Amber of SweetAmbs which you can see here!  Once the cookies dried overnight, I piped simple menorahs on top.

These cookies gave me a hard time.  I had an idea that just flopped, twice.  I covered the cookies with light blue royal icing, that was easy.  I had an idea that I saw in the latest  issue of JCreate Magazine to use silver and stamp out the dreidel shape.  I could not get it to look good in edible form!  So I needed a new idea fast.  I decided to stencil these cookies using silver airbrush color.  The only problem was that  I had no stencil!  So I designed one and had my husband print it out using our 3D printer.  It is the best gadget we have ever gotten; we keep coming up with new uses for it!  Once my herringbone stencil was printed, I airbrushed the cookies.  My next idea was to pipe some dreidels, but every design I tried just looked gross.  I was starting to get frustrated.  Then I remembered that I had a “Happy Hanukkah” stencil and tried that.  Now my simple and elegant cookies were actually simple and elegant!  Happy Hanukkah!  Here are some great holiday recipes from some of my best blogging buddies!