My son has a milk allergy, he's highly allergic to anything that comes from a cow's udder - this includes milk, butter, sour cream, cheese, and cream cheese. As you can imagine, this leaves him out of a lot of yummy foods, including desserts. For a family potluck this weekend, I made sugar cookies, using butter-flavored Crisco instead of butter, frosted with royal icing so the little guy could have something for dessert (ever try to find a butter-free dessert?). I think the butter-flavored Crisco tastes weird, but he loves the cookies and doesn't know any different.
I won't lie to you, I love making decorated cookies, but my strategy is to distract the viewer with color so they won't notice that they're terribly, terribly sloppy. I still think they make an impressive presentation - IF you use enough color! It's all about the color! And don't forget the bling - that's edible disco glitter dust sprinkled on them.
My recipe made 24 4-inch cookies which, if I were selling, could potentially sell for $4/each (assuming standard $1/inch pricing). Check out my costs in CakeBoss:
30 cents each! That's some profit margin!
