I know just last week I was bragging about how much I’ve been enjoying living in New York City, but there are surely some things I miss about Connecticut. Having a full size kitchen (and oven), an outdoor space, probably about 5x as much room to live in, and the sounds of birds chirping in the morning are all things I think about longingly from time to time. And then of course there’s my family. The 18 minute drive home has turned into a 3 hour door to door train trip, and although that’s still pretty close considering I lived in North Carolina for 4 years, sometimes it feels very, very far. While in dental school I saw my parents and brother at least once a week, sometimes more, but now we’re lucky to see each other once a month. It’s not that I’m homesick – I love living here in NYC and having a newlywed adventure with Ryan, but of course I miss them terribly at times, especially when I was editing these photos this past week. I made these Scooby Snack cookies for my brother‘s birthday back in October and I’m only getting around to sharing them now since Thanksgiving and Christmas treats seemed to get in the way for awhile. They’re so perfectly Scotty and anyone who knows him would know how much he loved them, especially because they’re peanut butter flavored!
Scott has been a Scooby Doo fan for as long as I can remember – before the live-action movies were made, before the stoner kids tried to claim Scooby as their own, and definitely long before DVDs were even a thing. He has an absurd collection of Scooby Doo tapes and DVDs, numbering somewhere in the 60s last time we counted. Those meddlin’ kids are constantly playing on my parents big screen TV, and although we prefer watching Mystery Inc. to the Power Rangers, there are only so many ghost mysteries I can sit through in one day. But not Scott, nope – he watches them over and over and over. So for his birthday I bought him a Scooby Doo baking set that came with a dog bone cookie cutter. We put it to use together making peanut butter roll-out cookies, layering them with peanut butter buttercream, and decorating them with a little royal icing. Okay maybe I did all of the decorating, but he did help me make the actual cookies, and eat the leftover peanut butter of course. The cookies were the perfect combination of sweet and salty, and I loved how the creamy buttercream helped add even more softness to the peanut butter sugar cookies.
You could do these without the peanut butter (just use a basic sugar cookie recipe instead) and use any type of filling you’d like depending on your preference. This birthday boy is a die-hard peanut butter fan (example A and B) so I couldn’t not use peanut butter for his birthday treat. I did my best to freehand the “SD” dog tag logo to the cookies, but I must admit it wasn’t the easiest task and this detail could be left out entirely if need be. I’ve seen Scooby Snack cookies done with “SCOOBY” imprinted or written on instead, and that might be simpler depending on what kind of decorating tools you have at hand. Or leave them plain, slather on some peanut butter buttercream, and sit back and watch Scooby, Shaggy, Fred, Velma, and Daphne do their thing. Oh and if you live in Colorado, these cookies might just be the perfect snack for your next legal bender :)
Scooby Snack Cookies
Yield: 36 sandwich cookies
Ingredients:
for the peanut butter cut out cookies:
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking powder
1-1/2 cups all purpose flour
for the peanut butter buttercream:
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
3-1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
for the royal icing:
follow recipe and instructions from here
Directions:
for the peanut butter cut out cookies:
In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together the butter and peanut butter together until light and fluffy. Add the sugars and continue to beat until creamy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until well incorporated.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the baking powder and flour and slowly add to the butter mixture with the mixer on low. Mix until just combined. Form dough into a disc, cover in plastic wrap, and chill in the fridge for an hour.
Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface about 1/4" thick and use a dog bone cookie cutter to cut out shapes. Place on a parchment paper or Silpat-lined baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes, until edges just start to turn golden brown. Let the cookies chill on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
for the peanut butter buttercream:
In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together the butter and peanut butter for 2-3 minutes until light and fluffy. With the mixer on low, slowly add the powdered sugar and then increase the speed to medium and beat for another 2 minutes. Add the milk and vanilla and continue beating until smooth.
for assembly and decoration:
Prepare and dye royal icing as desired. Decorate half of the cookies with a Scooby Doo logo and allow royal icing to dry overnight. Once complete, pair up similar sized plain cookies and spread peanut butter buttercream in between to make sandwich cookies.
Happy extremely belated birthday to the best brother in the whole world! What scares me more isn’t that this blog has been around for four years, but that the first birthday post I did for him had the number “17” on the cake. How is he already 21??
These cookies are so cute!! What a simple, easy way to make a fun themed treat for a party! LOVE!
erica –
what fun cookies!! I (and all my kids) LOVE peanut butter too. can’t wait to try these.
your brother must have been thrilled, what a beautiful, loving big sis you are.
happy belated birthday, scott!
they are so adorable!
you are a huge scooby doo fan. love the cookie and the picture of the movies. looks like our collection
Super cute cookies!!! These cookies make me remind of my child hood days.
Now I will make it for my little daughter.
Thanks