Graduation Bears

I'm back (after a busy month of no blogging)! And I'm now officially a college graduate! I just graduated last Tuesday morning in the pouring rain... Seriously, it was the only rainy day of the week. What is up with that? Well, at least it was a super memorable experience.

Nonetheless, it's big milestones in life, like graduation, that make me realize just how quickly the years pass. To think, just four years ago I was still in high school with pretty much no idea how to bake. Now, four years later, after teaching myself to bake and realizing how awesome it is, here I am with my own baking blog. It's interesting to see just where life takes us. For my graduation, I decided that it'd be nice to bake a bunch of Cal themed cookies to pass out to friends at the reception. The key was that I didn't want the designs to be too complicated, so that it'd be easy to make them in bulk. In the end it all worked out, and I ended up with two designs: a blue and yellow Cal heart (much love for Berkeley) and graduation bears (Go Bears!).

Graduation Bear Cookies

sugar cookie dough
1-inch circle cookie cutter
rectangle cookie cutter (or a knife)
pearl milk tea straw

Roll out the sugar cookie dough to 1/4 inch thick between two sheets of plastic wrap. Use the circle cookie cutter to cut out circles for faces. Use the straw to cut out small circles for ears. To make the hat, use the circle cookie cutter to cut out a semicircle from a piece of dough, keep the outline portion of of the dough (not what was cut out). Next take a rectangle cookie cutter (or a knife) to cut out the semicircle outline. Then take the straw to cut out two ear holes from the cutout.

Piece the hat, two small circles, and one large circle together on a parchment lined baking sheet. Make sure that the pieces are well stuck together and try to smooth out the connecting areas so the lines aren't so apparent. Bake as indicated in the dough recipe and let cool completely before decorating.

Decorating Cookies

sugar cookie icing
orange food coloring
brown food coloring
yellow food coloring
black food coloring

Make the sugar cookie icing. Take some of it and mix in black food coloring. Then use it to fill in the hat area on the bear cookies as indicated above. To make peach food coloring, add a very small amount of orange and brown food coloring to the white icing. Use it to make a small oval in the middle of the bear face. When the hat is totally dry, make some yellow icing and use a toothpick to trace out a tassel on the bear over the hat and part of the face. Lastly use a toothpick to dot out eyes, the nose, and the mouth in black icing.

P.S. These would make great gifts for any recent Berkeley grads or new bears who will be attending Cal in the fall. And I'm sure this idea can also easily be adapted to fit another school's colors/mascot :).