My niece lives in northern California and I live in Texas. Her birthday is July 12th and I would like to bake some cookies in the shape of letters that spell out "Happy Birthday." My problem is that obviously I have to mail them to her, but I would like to frost and decorate the cookies. Is there a certain type of frosting I should use? What's the best way to package them? It could take up to two weeks for her to receive them once I mail them because she is on a military base (Base security adds up to four days to delivery time.) Please help..time is running out. Thank you!
My thought is that you would need to ice them with a royal icing so that they could be mailed. I mailed some cookies to my sister, they weren't decorated but not one cookie was broken when they arrived. I sealed them in that Press and Seal stuff so each cookie was in a space by itself...does that make sense?? Then I put bubble wrap between each layer in the box so that there was plenty of cushioning. I think it you use the royal icing and package them well that you should have no problem.
I don't think Royal Icing is your only option - I have heard it doesn't taste that great, so it wouldn't be my first choice. When I make xmas cookies it is with a nice "hard" glaze - but its very delicious. I don't have the recipe at work with me, but it is basically 1 cup of confectioners sugar, enough milk to make it the consistency you want (don't make it too thin because then it is runny and if you don't color it with food coloring, you will be able to see the cookie through it) and either a drop of lemon or vanilla extract for additional flavor. It hardens perfectly and its delicious.
As far as the packaging goes, another trick you can try is individually ziploc bag each cookie and then seal the ziploc almost all the way but leave a little space in the one corner. Take a plastic straw (like on from McDonalds) and just barely insert it into the bag. "Suck" the air out and quickly seal the bag. I do this to store cookies in the freezer...it takes all the air out of the bag and makes it look packaged like those machines do it. It works awesomely. Then I would do like Cindymm4 suggested, package with bubble wrap.
This should work great!
Good luck.
i always have the worst luck when i ship cookies... they always break
if you ship your cookies with proity mail, it should take the same amount of time to get there no matter if she lives on base or in civi neighborhood
I would put a peice of bread in the package it helps to keep the cookies fresher
I am not sure how it keeps it fresh but I have sent bake goods to my husband while he was on deployment they got there fresh but the bread was hard
Misdawn, I think the cookies you were referring to are done by antonia74...she does amazing cookies! It is a royal icing that she uses and she posted the recipe...here it is.
antonia74 [May 12, 2005 @ 11:28 PM]
Here's the icing recipe: 6oz of warm water + 5 Tablespoons of meringue powder in mixing bowl. Whisk it for 30 seconds by hand until it gets frothy. Add in 1 tsp of cream of tartar and whisk for 30 seconds more. Dump in 1 kg of icing sugar, add the paddle attachment to the mixer and mix on the lowest speed for 10 minutes until thick and white. Cover this bowl with a damp cloth, but not touching icing. Leave it for an hour of so before using it. If you need thinner icing only thin with warm water.
1 kg = approximately 9 cups
I have made that recipe several times now and it's really good and it dries hard so it would be perfect for shipping cookies.
Actually the bread has the moisture sucked out of it by the cookies to keep the cookies soft. I've done this too when I have shipped brownies overseas to our best friend who is currently stationed in Baghdad.
I put 2 brownies and one piece of bread to a sandwhich size ziploc bag, I then put peanuts in the box, stack the bagged brownies into the box, and then cover the top and sides with more peanuts.
When I do this I just go and buy the cheapy white bread.
You can use this same trick for you brown sugar, the brown sugar sucks the moisture out of the bread so that the brown sugar stays soft and pliable, while the bread gets rock hard. (Make sure to change the bread out as soon as it is hard, that way your brown sugar always stays soft and fresh.)
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