Ladies’ Hat Piñata Cookies

Wearing ladies hats may have gone out of fashion, but these festively decorated Ladies’ Hat Piñata Cookies will still be fun treats to serve on Mother’s Day.

I wish I would have gotten this recipe posted last week before the Kentucky Derby. It is still quite fashionable for women to wear elaborate hats to the horse race and these brightly colored candy filled hat cookies would have made perfect party favors or desserts for the event.

But, alas, my crazy schedule kept me from writing the post even though I made these cookies 2 weeks ago.

When I hit the road for an 8 day trip to Chicago, I thought I’d find plenty of time to work, but that just didn’t happen. I traveled with a friend and after attending the Wilton Sweet Up event for two days, my friend and I took a few classes at the Wilton School of Cake Decorating. In between we did lots of shopping, sightseeing, eating, and talking. It felt like we never stopped talking and I was having such a good time, that I didn’t even want to pick up my computer.

I’m home now, unpacked, and back to work. I can’t wait to share all the fun things I learned at the Wilton school, but that will have to wait until I get some Mother’s Day treats posted.

These candy filled hat cookies are very much like the Baseball Hat Piñata Cookies I shared with you a few weeks ago. Like those cookies, I once again used a cake ball pan to shape the rounded top of the hats.

These hat cookies can be colored any way you’d like and decorated using fondant, modeling chocolate, candies, or sprinkles.  I decorated mine with modeling chocolate daisies. They were easy to make and added just enough flair to the hats to dress them up.

Ladies’ Hat Piñata Cookies

Cookie Dough- (makes 12-15 cookies)

4 cups (17 ounces) all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup butter, softened slightly
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste or pure vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon almond extract
gel food coloring

Decorations:
4-6 ounces modeling chocolate* or fondant
corn syrup
2-4 tablespoons royal icing (or store bought cookie icing to match cookie color)
candy (about a tablespoonful per cookie)

*You can find the recipe and tutorial for making homemade white modeling chocolate on my Chocolate Making Tips page.

Supplies:

Bake Pop Pan or other cake ball pan
3 – 4 inch scalloped round cookie cutter (based on the size of your cake ball pan)
2 1/2 inch round cookie cutter
optional, JEM 5mm strip cutter #2 (or use a pizza cutter)
small daisy plunger cutter
small round plunger cutter

Instructions:

Mix the flour, salt, and baking powder together in a bowl. Set aside. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Stir in eggs, vanilla bean paste, and almond extract.

Add the dry ingredients and stir just until blended.

Note: I love using Rodelle’s Vanilla Bean Paste in my cookies. The flavor is so intense and it doesn’t bake out as it does when using liquid extracts, so the cookies have an amazing vanilla flavor.

Color the dough. I divided my dough into 4 equal parts and used pink, violet, blue, and yellow. Just note that being the dough is a light tan color, you wont get true colors. My blue was really more teal, which I thought was quite pretty.

Lightly dust your work surface, roll out the dough to between 1/8th of an inch and 1/16th of an inch thickness. Cut out 4 hat brims using a round scalloped cutter.

Place on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Bake these cookies for 12-14 minutes.

Re-roll each colored cookie dough out to a 1/16 inch thickness. Cut 4 circles of each color using round cutters, so that when you drape the dough over your cake ball pan, the dough drapes over but doesn’t touch the base of the pan. The cookies will spread slightly while baking so you want to give them a bit of room to spread. You don’t want the dough forming a lip at the base of the cookie. I used a 2 1/2 inch cutter, but your pan may be smaller and require a smaller cutter.

Drape circles of dough over each mound on your pan and smooth with your fingers.

Place the pan in the freezer for 15 minutes.

Bake the cookies on the bottom rack of your oven for 8-11 minutes.

Note: You will have some excess dough and can make a few more hat cookies. Being my cake ball pan only allowed me to make 13 cookies at a time, I made 4 of each then just rolled out the excess dough and baked up a few cookies to snack on.

Allow the cookies to cool completely.

You will notice a few of my cookies browned quite a bit on top which was caused by a few hot spots in my oven. If you have those too, it’s best to rotate the cookies half way through baking. I got distracted and forgot to do that.

To assemble your hat cookies, fill the rounded cookies with candies, then pipe a thin line of royal icing around the top edge of the cookie. Turn one of the scalloped cookies upside down, set it on top of the iced cookie, and press them together to seal. Turn the cookie right side up and allow to dry for at least 30 minutes.

To decorate your hat cookies, roll out some modeling chocolate or fondant and cut into 1/8th inch wide by 8 inch long strips and attach to the hats using royal icing, cutting off any excess.

Color small pieces of white modeling chocolate or fondant to match your hats. Color some green as well.

Roll out the modeling chocolate and cut out flowers using a small daisy plunger cutter. Cut the center of the flowers out using a small round plunger cutter.

Attach the centers to the daisies using a small dab of water.Note: I used Wilton’s new Water Brush, which I love. I don’t have to mess around with bowls of water, which I’ve been known to spill all over my modeling chocolate. The water is contained in the brush. It was perfect for attaching these tiny pieces together.

Once all of your cookies are assembled and decorated they are ready to dress up your dessert table.

Items used to make this project that are available on Amazon.com (commission earned for sales)

 

More Candy Filled Piñata Treats
from Hungry Happenings

Baseball Hat Piñata Cookies

Basketball Pinata Cookies

Football Pinata Brownies

3D Candy Filled Graduation Cap Cookies

Apple Pinata Cookies

Ear of Corn Pinata Cookies

Sombrero Pinata Cookies