Lobster cookies, the no guilt way to eat lobsters

In my weekend blog updates, I mentioned that we picked up a lobster shaped cookie cutter at Sur La Table.

With a little help from Steve on Sunday, the cookies got made. I have to say, rolled cookies are not my favorite things to make. I do like the novelty of them, decorating, and of course, eating them, but making them is sort of a pain. The dough for this kind of cookie usually has so much butter in it that it immediately starts to soften even after it's been in the fridge for a while. This dough has to be rolled to a certain thickness, which is usually so thin that it easily tears when you try to pick it up and move it to the baking sheet. I can't tell you how many lobster claws and tails we ripped off before I decided to just roll the dough directly on the baking sheet. Even though this only resulted in four or five lobsters in a batch, it was less stressful than trying to successfully move the cut lobsters to the sheet. (Michelle V. - if you read my blog, could you please leave a comment about your roll cookie method? I remember you told me your secret that involved cutting them out directly on the baking sheet but I can't remember if you did it after freezing the dough on the sheet or par baking? And anyone else who reads this, if you have tips for handling roll cookies, please let me know. I'm all ears!)

By the time I got to my last batch, I had morphed the roll-directly-on-the-sheet method with the roll-out-on-parchment-and-then-cut-the-paper-around-each-cookie-and-put-that-on-the-sheet method. This second method allowed me to get more cookies in each batch but it was a little tedious.

By the time these little buggers were all baked, I was done. They would have to wait until Monday to get their shells.

So this afternoon, I got out the required items for the frosting and went to work. I was trying to get a red color that is nothing like what I got. In person, the frosting is more of a dark salmon color rather than a deep red. Oh well.

I had read a hint about frosting cookies that said to use the back of a spoon rather than a spatula. Deciding to try it, I first used the tablespoon. Way too big. Switched down the the teaspoon. Better, but still a little sloppy. Finally, ding ding ding! Use my favorite spoon of all - the demitasse! The baby bear spoon was juuuuust right. I used the new one I got over the weekend and it worked like a charm. Before I had tested all the spoons, I also tried painting on the frosting. Eh, it was okay because there was no room for sloppiness, but I liked how the spoon coated cookies looked better. Here are my sad test cookies. These were casualties of broken claws and tails which resulted after baking. Delicate little things.

When I got them all frosted, I was not satisfied with the color. Salmon pink on lobster? No, that will not do. Sprinkles! Red sprinkles will help punch up that color a little bit. I was saved from having to make my own red sprinkles - which would probably turn out pink anyway - because I just happened to have a large container of them that I had bought on sale at Target from the post-Fourth of July discount bin. I believe that was Fourth of July 2008. I have no idea what compelled me to buy these at that time, but something in my subconscious must have been clairvoyant to know I would need them nearly fifteen months later.

Here are the finished cookies all jazzed up.


Those round ones are from the scraps and are cut using a ravioli cutter. I have yet to use it to make ravioli.