Arizona Birthday Cookies

I never realized how much I love the state of Arizona until I married a Utah boy and had to defend AZ all the time. It's too hot, too allergy-ridden, has bad traffic and bad pollution, too brown, too dry...blah, blah, blah. :) While all those may be sorta true, I love Arizona. There is so much that is good about her. Yeah, it's hot. Yeah, it never rains. But I love the warmth. I love the smell of desert plants and orange blossoms. I love the citrus that grows everywhere. I love the diversity...both in the land and the people. You can drive 3 hours out of Phoenix and hit the ski slopes or go camping. You can hike the various mountains surrounding the valley. I could go on and on. But to me it's home. Hubby is coming around. I think he'd miss it if we left. Sorta. :) Anyway, in honor of Arizona's 100th birthday on February 14th I decided to finally do something I've been wanting to do for a long time:

Ta-da!

I know it's far from perfect, but this was my first time. I found this cute AZ cookie cutter a while ago at ABC Cake Decorating Supplies in Phoenix. If you love to bake anything containing sugar, this is the place for you. It has so much stuffed into a little tiny store. Anyway, I finally decided to take the plunge and decorate some cookies. I've been researching this topic for a long time now and slowly collecting supplies. I've read tons of tutorials, watched tons of youtube videos and perused tons of cookie decorating websites and blogs. There is soooo much information out there. And so many talented people! These are a few of the blogs I went to the most often to learn:

Bake at 350
The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle
Sweetopia

These ladies generously share their tips and secrets. And they are super talented. I went with this sugar cookie recipe from Sugarbelle. The recipe calls for powdered sugar instead of regular white sugar. It makes a such a difference. And tastes so good! I also went with her royal icing recipe.


And since Valentine's Day is coming up, I made some conversation heart cookies. For the hearts on the AZ cookie and the wording on the conversation heart cookies I just used Americolor food safe markers. I just wasn't ready to try that with icing.

It was a good first experience with royal icing. I think I beat the icing too long, because it's a little to hard and crunchy now. But maybe it's supposed to be that way?? I also had to go buy more tips. I started off with a 5, but that was too big. I only had a 1, and that was way too small. So I bought a 2 and 3. The 3 was perfect to outline with. I also chose to decorate after the kids had gone to bed. I needed every little ounce of concentration I could muster. :) It was fun! I'm excited to try again!