lip-smackin' good: baseball cookie pops

I made these cookie pops last month for a baseball-themed birthday party.  They were part of a goodie bag that each guest received.  The cookies were a hit, and if you read on, you can make them easily.

Ingredients

- cookie dough (I really like this recipe)

- lollipop sticks

- frosting (if you want to make your own, this one is easy and delicious. I used it here.)

- food coloring

- small, clear plastic bags--to wrap the cookie pops and for icing piping purposes (say that 5 times fast!)

- ribbon

Directions

1. Preheat oven 

2. Form 1/2 inch balls of dough. 

3. Spear the dough with your lollipop stick, so that the top of the stick is at the center of the dough ball. 

4. Place the uncooked pop on a cookie sheet.  The dough ball will cook into a circle.

5. Most sugar cookies bake for 8-10 minutes. 

6. Let cookies cool.  

7. Spread white icing onto the cookie pops, forming a circle out of icing on the top of each cookie.

8. Mix red food coloring and a small portion of your icing in a small bowl. 

9. Scoop icing into clear plastic bag and cut the tip of one of the bag's bottom corners.

10. Draw the stitching on each of the cookies, using the red icing.

11. Repeat steps 8 & 9, using black icing. 

12.  Write your message on each of the baseballs, using the black icing.

13.  Let icing on cookies harden a bit before wrapping each cookie in a small, clear plastic bag.

14.  Tie each of the bags to the lollipop sticks using ribbon.

15.  Share and enjoy your baseball cookie pops!

I make mistakes so you don't have to:

My first attempt at these pops resulted in gargantuan cookie pops that expanded almost exponentially in the oven and stuck to each other.  lovely.  My advice is to stick to the 1/2 inch balls of dough and increase incrementally if you want bigger pops.  I also painstackingly rolled out the dough and used circular cookie cutters.  While this did eventually result in small and proportional cookies, it is kind of bothersome and unnecessary if you're just going to make a simple circle shape.  The dough ball method works. I have subsequently tried it, and the cookie pops look just as round as the ones I made using cookie cutters.

ballgame

Last Friday, I got to go to my second baseball game of the season.  It was so helpful to have learned many of the rules beforehand.  I also loved being able to see the whole field at one time, and watch the ball fly into the outfield.  TV only captures so much.  The Cardinals lost to the Phillies in extra innings, but it was a really fun game to watch.

surprise!

party bags and dessert treat

Joe's birthday is this week, and his family and I decided it would be fun to surprise him.  We invited his friends, picked baseball as a loose theme and orchestrated a foolproof surprise plan.  Joe's dad organized a "family meeting" at a local restaurant, and Joe's sister and I went ahead to set up for the party. 

centerpieces

 

In keeping with the baseball theme, I made baseball centerpieces with glass rectangle vases, green paper grass and small vinyl baseballs from the party store.  I filled two smaller square vases with peanuts in their shells, and made a few mini-balloon centerpieces to put between them.  Always a fan of party favors, each guest received a bag with Cracker Jacks, a bag of peanuts, a Baby Ruth bar and a baseball cookie pop with "Joe #26" written on it.

cookie pops

Joe was completely surprised, and it took a little while for it to sink in that his friends and family were all there to celebrate him. 

Have you ever surprised someone for their birthday?  What did you do?  Was it hard to keep it a surprise? This is the longest I've ever kept a surprise a secret.  I was so afraid I was going to blow it.