Super Bowl Sweets

I love the Super Bowl. Although I like to watch football occasionally and I do want the Packers to take this one, I think it is the Super Bowl Party that makes me so happy. I honestly don’t remember a Super Bowl that wasn’t spent with friends and delicious food. This year I am extremely excited about a new buffalo chicken dip I am going to try out. If you are wanting some sweet cutesy (Are you even allowed to use that word in the same sentence as football?) ideas for the Super Bowl, here are a few.

Football Sugar Cookies

3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups white sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together, set aside. In a large bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Gradually blend in the sifted ingredients until fully absorbed. Cover dough, and chill for about 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease cookie sheets. On a clean floured surface, roll out small portions of chilled dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Using a football cookie cutter, cut out cookies and place on bakeware.

Bake 8 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are barely brown. Remove from cookie sheets to cool on wire racks.

Royal Icing:

Royal Icing isn’t my favorite, but it looks so seemless and classy, I love it on sugar cookies.

2 pounds confectioners sugar

1 cup water, plus more if needed

1/2 cup meringue powder ( I use Wilton)

Mix sugar, water, and meringue powder with a mixer on low speed until smooth, about 8 minutes. Icing should look like glue. Reserve 1.5 cups of white frosting. Color the remainder with brown frosting.

Using a decorators bag and a #5 tip pipe brown frosting onto cooled cookies. Once brown frosting has cooled, using a decorators bag and #2 tip add stitching. After frosting is set, store in an air tight container.

Game Day Cupcakes

For these cupcakes I actually just used a chocolate cake mix, with a few added tricks. Prepare 2 dozen cupcakes as directed. Bake and cool.

For the frosting I used Wilton’s Buttercream Recipe, and colored it with green icing color. Using a decorators bag and tip #233 pipe ‘grass’ on the top of each cupcake. Grass is fun to make, you really don’t have to be to careful. Top with a football truffle or whatever else you can think of.

Football Truffles

I would have prefered to make oreo truffles for these…they are my favorite! But with this much snow, I just worked with what was in my cabinet, so I made cake truffles. I will be honest here..this is the first time I had ever made these and my first ones looked terrible, but the more I made the better they started to look.

1 cake mix, you can use any flavor but I went with chocolate since we are making footballs.

3/4 cup of frosting, you can use homemade or frosting from a tub. I prefer homemade frosting any day.

1 pound chocolate almond bark

1 package semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 cup white chocolate or vanilla chips

Crumble the cooled cake into a large bowl. Mix thoroughly with frosting. Using a little less than a tablespoon of the cake mixture, form into football shapes and lay on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper.  Chill for a couple hours.

Melt chocolate over low heat or in microwave. I prefer to use a double boiler. Dip and roll balls in chocolate and lay on wax paper until firm. Once chocolate is set, melt white chocolate. Using a decorators bag and a #2 tip, pipe stitching and details onto each football. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator or a cool place.