Wild, Wild West Cowboy Cookies

By Tuda Libby Crews
Original Cookbook Review by Lucas Everidge

Want to add to your cookbook library a new, colorful volume that's all about making distinctively decorated cookies? Take a look at Tuda Libby Crews's Wild, Wild West Cowboy Cookies. .

Wyoming-based Crews presents her irresistible western-style cookies that dazzle anyone you serve-- kids, grandkids, parties or potlucks for work. Because they are decorated with frosting, these cookies take a little longer than your regular cookies. But the techniques used by Crews pay off with delicious cookies with real eye appeal. Her colorful cookies have Western shapes like bucking broncos, cowboy hats and boots, longhorns, lizards, chile peppers and adobe churches.

Crews begins the book by describing her interest in making distinctive, decorated cookies. This special interest, along with her skills, grew over the years. Visiting Arizona, she bought a chile pepper shaped cookie cutter, thinking it would be neat to serve chile-shaped cookies with her Mexican dinners. She developed her stable of Western-style shapes, like adobe churches, bucking broncos and cowboy boots. She applied frostings with bright, rich colors. The result is that her cookies today are the life of the party. Crews fills the book well-documented techniques and styles so that you can learn to create similar hits.

The book includes two basic cookie dough recipes. One is a sugar dough with lemon zest, and the second is a chocolate dough. There are three different frosting recipes, as well. I am not an experienced cookie maker, but after receiving this book, I was inspired to dedicate an afternoon to making the cowboy cookies using the Adobe Frosting, which is basically a brown sugar frosting.

I wimped out on making all the colorful decorative icings, and just frosted my cookies with a trusty knife. Honestly, I had never made and frosted cookies before, so I was patting myself on the back for getting as far as I did.

The cowboy lemon cookie dough produces a very tasty cookie. After baking the cookies, I let them cool before applying the frosting. There were a lot of them, they turned out very nice, and were all gone within two days. I am certain that the chocolate ones would turn out equally as good.

Cowboy cookies By the way, the recipes yield enormous quantities. I halved the recipes and still got about three dozen cookies before I decided to stop. Crews advises in the book to halve the recipes if you are using a hand mixer. Frankly, I used my large electric mixer and advise that, unless you want a real upper body workout, you will enjoy the benefits of a full-size mixer. (Of course, if you need one, just click on the Amazon Kitchen logo on Texas Cooking to get one!)

Crews also includes useful sections on such topics as storing cookies, shipping cookies and special cookie-decorating workshops. The book contains an order form for Crews' special Wild West cookie cutters if you wish to create the irrestible cookies shown in the book. The cookie cutters range from moderately priced to slightly high. The bucking pony, the gecko lizard and church are tin 4-inch cutters for $6.00. The largest, the cowboy on the bronco, is a 6-inch tin cutter for $19.95. My favorite shapes are the boots, which are made with a 3-inch tin cutter available for $14.95. The book includes a special page and order form for purchasing the cookie cutters.

More Texas Cooking Cookie Recipes

Sweet Old-Fashioned Texas Cookie Recipes
by John Raven, Ph.B.

If you are looking for a specialized cookie book for your collection, or looking to brush up on making great decorated cookies, don't miss Wild, Wild West Cowboy Cookies.

Tuda Libby Crews also wrote - Wild, Wild 1950's Cookies (Wild, Wild Cookies, 2)

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