January 02, 2011

Red Velvet Shortbread Fireplaces

Hope you all had a great New Years! I can't believe it's 2011 already. To continue with my holiday cookie posts, today I have a recipe for Red Velvet Shortbread Fireplaces.


Since people make and decorate gingerbread houses all the time, I thought it'd be interesting to switch it up a little and just decorate a certain part of the house: the fireplace. I mean in real life many people really do decorate their fireplaces for the holidays, whether it's with stockings, holly, wreaths, or holiday lights. I decided to keep it simple with just a string of lights and a small fire :).


Red Velvet Shortbread
adapted from Better Homes and Gardens

1 1/4 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
8 tbsp (1 stick) butter, diced up
1 tbsp red food coloring
green, yellow, red gummy bears

Mix the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, and salt. Cut the butter into the mixture until it forms crumbs. Add in the red food coloring and mix till evenly distributed. Gather the dough and sandwich it between two pieces of plastic wrap.

Preheat oven to 325°F. Roll out the dough to 1/4" thick. Take a knife and cut out 3x3 inch squares from the dough. Then cut out 1.5x1.5 inch squares from the bottom of each square as shown below. Place the fireplace shaped shapes on parchment lined baking sheets. Chill the sheets in the fridge for 10 minutes. Then bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Let cool on a cooling rack.

To prepare the gummy bears, take kitchen shears and cut off the gummy bears' arms and legs and place them on a piece of parchment paper (sticky side down).

Decorating Fireplace Cookies
red velvet shortbread cookies (above)
gummy bear arms & feet (above)
royal icing
white chocolate
dark chocolate
yellow food coloring
orange food coloring
brown food coloring
green food coloring


First, dip the top edge of the fireplace cookies in melted white chocolate and place on a piece of parchment paper to dry. Next, take melted dark chocolate and use it to draw rectangles a bit larger than the 1.5x1.5 inch cookie holes on another piece of parchment paper. Place one cookie on top of each chocolate rectangle before it dries, making sure the hole is completely covered by the chocolate. Wait for the chocolate to dry.

Mix orange food coloring with some royal icing. Use a toothpick and draw a spiky flame on the dried chocolate. Let dry. Mix some yellow food coloring with some royal icing. Use a toothpick and draw a smaller flame on top of the orange flame. Let dry. Mix some brown food coloring with some royal icing and draw some log shapes on the bottom edge of the piece of chocolate. Let dry.

Tint some royal icing a teal green color and place it in a piping bag. Pipe three loops of green icing along the bottom edge of the white chocolate. Take a gummy bear arm/leg and dip half of it in royal icing. Place it under the green icing "string," just touching the bottom side. Repeat with the rest of the gummy bear arms/legs, alternating colors as seen above.

43 comments:

  1. If this was facebook, I would like justine's comment. I totally agree. That is just sooo beautiful. Happy New Year!

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  2. These are SO CUTE! Love them - very adorable. What a great idea!

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  3. justine, Ester, Sara: Thanks for the comments! Props on the super fast commenting, hehe :D.

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  4. These are insanely cute. How creative!

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  5. Fantastically creative and cute. Love them. So original.

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  6. Amazing! I wish I'd had that recipe in time for Christmas but I suppose there's always next year... Wow, I'm so impressed!!

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  7. These are so adorable!! Wish the holidays were still going on, I want to make them!

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  8. Simply awesome !!! What a wonderful idea !!!

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  9. Wow. I mean really, really wow. These are incredible! I posted a link on ediblecrafts.craftgossip.com :)

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  10. Just saw this on foodgawker and had to jump over to say it is so freakin cute!

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  11. Hi, nice to meet you and your delicious blog ^_^ sorry for my bad english.
    Bye
    Sonia

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  12. LOVE them! You are so clever!!! My new Christmas favorite:)

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  13. I love it! <3
    I love this and everything else you make!

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  14. I'm so amazed by these that I had to take my laptop from the desk to show my husband. These are a work of love. Wow!

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  15. These are truly fantastic. I am wowed by the incredible details!!

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  16. Wow! Those are amazing. So cute.

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  17. These are so unbelievably cute!

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  18. This is really an amazing piece of art! Happy New Year!

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  19. Wow! what a great idea. The fireplaces are so nice. i love the details in the lights and fire. I just found your site yesterday and love it.

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  20. Suzy, Lora, Smita Srivastava, Chic Cookies: Thanks :D!

    Zeralda & Jessica: I always try to post earlier but it never seems to happen. But at least you're prepared for next year :).

    Kita, Sonia, maybe strawberry: Welcome to my blog!

    Sue, ILoveChocolateee!, Jean, Heather, ttovie, Tracey, Xiaolu: Thanks for the comments!

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  21. Insanely brilliant! I can't wait to share with my readers next year! Happy New Year!

    hugs! Kim @ Party Frosting!

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  22. These are amazing! Props on creativity AND execution! :)

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  23. i LOVELOVELOVE this idea - red velvet is the best tasting thing ever, and the fireplace is just too cute

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  24. These are absolutely adorable! Definitely quite amazing!

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  25. Those are absolutely fantastic. I did cookies this year called Stained Glass Windows and I thought THOSE were tedious. The hours you must have put in perfecting those gorgeous cookies - dedication!! Beautiful work.

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  26. So adorable! And probably as yummy as it is cute!

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  27. Kim, culinaryneophyte, Peggy, Erika Beth: Thank you :)!

    regardingsugar: Thanks! Red velvet anything is pretty awesome.

    chiffonade: It really didn't take too long now that I think about it, especially since the shapes could be traced out with a ruler. You should check out my Stained Glasses Sunglasses Cookies! I will agree that stained glass cookies take forever b/c of all the cutting out of irregular shaped holes.

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  28. these look so perfect!!! what a cool idea!

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  29. I recently tried a dif recipe for red velvet shortbread and they were a big mess. They tasted great, but spread. Unfortunately, we couldn't figure out why b/c I followed the recipe to the T and the food blogger I found it from had no issues. Maybe I'll have better luck with this recipe for Valentine's day...

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  30. Oh my goodness, those are the cutest things ever! :) What a great idea

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  31. Oh my lordy.....(I had to use a word you never use) because these are truly incredibly unique. You must have the patience of a saint!! Not to mention enough creativity for the entire planet. Thanks for sharing. I will never look at red velvet the same again.

    Happy New Year to you and kudos!!
    Kathleen

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  32. The Future Chef & Ryan: Thank you!

    NikiTheo: That sometimes seems to be a problem with shortbread recipes because of the large amount of butter used. Perhaps they needed to be chilled longer? But anyway, hopefully when you try out this recipe, it'll turn out much better!

    Kathleen: Haha, thank you for the sweet comment.

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  33. wow those are really cute and creative!

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  34. Aw, poor gummy bears! They must be so sad for their severed limbs.

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  35. Dina: Thanks!

    Sarah: Gummy bear amputation :P.

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  36. Cutest things ever! I'm planning on making these this week to knock the socks off of my boyfriend's family at the Christmas party. How many cookies does this recipe yield? Thank you!

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  37. ACakeStory: Thanks! I know the recipe makes at least 20 cookies. Somewhere between 20-30, I think. Sorry, I'm not totally sure since it's been a while since I've made them.

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  38. These cookies look like magic, great job!
    I liked this form and decoration, and they did.
    Many thanks for the recipe, instructions, and Christmas idea.
    Greetings and happy holidays, Diana

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  39. these are so insanely cute, you did an amazing job.. i don't think i have quite the patience to make it through all of the steps, but oh so tempting! great post (; tiffany

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  40. I think there might be something missing from this recipe. I made these today and the dough didn't come together at all. It was just all powdery flour. So I added half & half until it came together. Turned out great.

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  41. I am just now reaching the epiphany that you are literally ripping off the limbs of innocent tiny bears and hanging them above your fire place. HA!

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  42. I love your recipe so much I had to share it with my readers--- I hope you don't mind. You'll find the link here.
    http://sugarandthespice.org/red-velvet-snowflake-cookies/

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