Fall Shenanigans

The other morning I had looked out my kitchen window and observed the courtyard. It was pretty early in the morning. Squirrels and turkeys were out doing their thing and you could still see the green grass with a few scattered leaves. I left the kitchen to do whatever I was doing that morning and I came back a couple hours later and looked out the window once again. The ground was covered in leaves. Not just a few more leaves, but covered. I looked up at the trees and they were still pretty full and slightly green. Where did these leaves come from? Where have the seasons gone? I want that season between summer and fall back. The one where it’s still pretty warm, but not too warm. It’s Michigan and I have to put up with it for now. I’m not powerful enough to change the seasons yet. Hopefully, this will be my last winter, so I’ll try to cherish it..or something.

To celebrate the season, I made these cute little Fall leaf cookies.

These cookies are made with a shortbread cookie and fondant. The combination of those two components makes for a very good cookie. The shortbread is not too sweet and has salt in it, so it goes well with the fondant that is mainly sugar. I recommend using a fondant that is actually tasty. I actually don’t remember what brand of fondant I used for this because I forgot to write down the name before I threw away the packaging. I’ll try to remember to next time.

I didn’t take pictures for the process of making these cookies, but one of my absolute favorite sites, Cake Journal , has a great tutorial on covering cookies with fondant.

Shortbread Cookies
Makes about 20 2-inch cookies

1 cup butter (room temperature)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

Preheat Oven to 350 Degrees F

1. Cream butter, sugar, and salt together until well combined.
2. Add flour 1/2 cup at a time to butter mixture and combine.If the dough is too
dry, then add ice cold water. If it is too wet, then add more flour.
3. Once the dough has been thoroughly combined,cover with plastic wrap and let it
chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
4. Take the dough out of the fridge and roll out onto a floured surface. Roll out to
your desired thickness. I like cookies that are 1/4 inch thick. You can attempt
to cut out your cookies now, but I prefer to put the "sheeted" dough back in the
fridge for 15-30 minutes.It's much easier to work with colder shortbread dough.
5. Cut out your desired shapes and bake for 10 minutes.I only bake these cookies to
where it's just barely golden brown around the edges. The recipe calls for no
eggs and you are basically cooking the flour.

*This recipe can be doubled.