If you’re a peanut butter fan like me, you’ve eaten your fair share of Nutter Butter cookies. Crispy peanut butter wafers filled with a peanut butter creme center. Yes, please. I decided to make them when I opened BraveTart’s new book for the first time.

The pages fell open right to a picture of her Nutter Butters and I couldn’t get my mind off making them. And that’s after flipping through more than 300 glorious pages of her incredible book focusing on Iconic American Desserts. There’s so much yum to make. We’re talking tons of classic dessert recipes inside plus recipes (and their origin stories) to recreate your favorite American brands like Twinkies, Oreos, Cracker Jacks, Pop Tarts, Fig Newtons, Snickers, Thin Mints and so much more.

Bravetart: Iconic American Desserts is a classic itself from the seriously sweet-minded Stella Parks. Check out her book and if you’re on Twitter, I highly recommend following her there @bravetart. She is incredibly generous with her knowledge and she has the goodies to back it up, too!

Okay let’s get baking.

The cookie dough is quick to whip up with flour, butter, sugar, salt, peanut butter, egg whites and baking soda. Once you’ve formed a soft dough, you’ll knead it into two discs for rolling and cutting out cookies.

Stella recommends a bikini-shaped cookie cutter, but I didn’t have one. I did have this similar shape from Sweet Sugarbelle (above) that I made work though. I could have just stuck with the shape as is, but instead I made one cut and then rotated the cookie cutter 180 degrees and made a second cut right on top. The shape in the center then ends up being symmetrical and much more like a peanut. This method did leave me with a lot more scraps to use for re-rolling but I didn’t mind.

Once I had my cutouts made and transferred to a parchment paper-lined baking sheet it was time to make an impression. I found a plastic potato masher that coincidentally ended up being the exact size of my cut out cookies. The grid on the masher made the perfect design by gently pressing into the dough.

All lined up and ready for the oven.

Bake the cookies for about 15 minutes and let them cool completely before piping the middles with peanut butter cream.

Pipe swirls of peanut butter creme on half of the cookies filling in each domed end of the peanut.

Sandwich them together for a classic cookie treat.

Hope you enjoy these perfectly peanutty cookies!

Cookie cuteness alert! These tiny puppy popsicles make me all kinds of happy. After the kitty cones I just made, I couldn’t help but give dogs their day, too … and these sugar cookies turned out darling.

Here’s the cookie cutter I used. It comes in different sizes, but I bought the 2-inch size to make petite pops.

And here’s the cookie and royal icing recipe I used if you need one.

Place cut-out cookie dough shapes on a parchment-lined baking sheet and then make the ears. Just roll dough into small balls and place in position for the right sizing. About a pea size I guess. Then shape the dough into ears and press into the top curved sides of the popsicle to bake.

Voila!

You can use an edible ink pen to draw a faint line as a guide for dripping chocolate. This helped a lot to make sure the curves are where I wanted them since the cookies are so small.

To decorate I used rainbow chip sprinkles for noses, mini confetti sprinkles for cheeks, tiny doggy bones for bows and some of these homemade sprinkles that I made.

Tint your royal icing in two colors. Pipe the lighter color on the bottom of the cookie and use a food pick tool to smooth out and coerce the icing into the exact position.

Place pink mini confetti sprinkles in position for cheeks. When the first color is dry, pipe the chocolate icing color on top.

Instead of piping and then flooding the royal icing, I used a consistency in between that was just thick enough to hold it’s shape without outlining first.

Before the icing dries, carefully place sprinkles and any bows in position and let dry.

When dry, pipe a large dot of royal icing in position for the snout and then carefully place a brown rainbow chip sprinkle in position for the nose. You could also pipe the noses as well.

To finish, draw eyes and mouths with a black edible ink pen and then dot the eyes with a tiny drop of white royal icing.

You can also pipe tiny dots around the cheeks to make them look extra adorable.

Pretty doggone cute!

Here’s one I’m holding for a better size reference.

BONUS BEARS:

I didn’t flatten or shape the ears for a few of the cookies when I baked them so I could try turning them into baby bears.

Now I want to make an entire batch of these cute little cubs. Cubsicles anyone?

Hope you enjoy!

I'm super in love with these ice cream turned kitty cat cone sugar cookies. They are all kinds of adorable and pretty easy to decorate.

I used this ice cream cone cookie cutter from Sweet Sugarbelle’s line of awesome cookie decorating products. I love that the lines of the cone are more rounded than straight. When I was deciding what kind of ice cream to make, it was the end of the cone that inspired me to turn them into kitty cats. The tip of the cone can be used to make the perfect little ear shape. Use it to cut out rounded triangles and then use the rounded ice cream end to cut out a curved bottom like in the pics above. Then gently press the ears to the cut out ice cream cones and bake away.

P.S. Here’s the sugar cookie and icing recipes I used to make them.

Check out some of Sweet Sugarbelle's other products. Cookie cutter duos, decorator bags and tips, cute packaging in different sizes. So much good stuff. And make sure to visit Sweet Sugarbelle's blog for endless cookie decorating ideas, too.

* When you’re ready to decorate, pipe pink royal icing on the ears and use a scribe (more on this in a minute) to help shape them. * Working with one cookie at a time, pipe the outline of the ice cream and ears with white royal icing. * Fill the center of the cone with flow consistency icing and immediately dot two pink cheeks in position. Then carefully place sprinkles toward the top portion of the ice cream.

* Next, pipe and fill the bottom of the cones. Let dry for a couple of hours so it’s safer to add facial details without messing up the icing. * When dry, use a black edible ink pen to draw on faces. I like this one from Americolor. Gently draw eyes, mouths, lashes and whiskers. Don’t press down too hard just in case the icing isn’t completely dry when drawing. * Then dot on pink royal icing in position for the nose and use the scribe to help shape it into a rounded triangle. Dot the eyes with white royal icing for a little more personality. Ummm… I mean purr-sonality. * Finish decorating by piping waffle cone lines and let dry completely.

Rewind. The scribe/food pick tool! Okay don’t laugh but this may be my favorite tool in a long time. Probably because I have never had one to use before. I’ve just always grabbed a toothpick to help coerce royal icing if needed. Well, now I don’t want to live without one. The super thin and pointed tip is much more precise. Throw in the long handle and it’s way better than a toothpick. I guess if I were a cookie decorator I would know about these things. Sometimes it takes a while. ; ) Anyway get one if you enjoy making decorated sugar cookies.

Ahhhh. I love these!!!

But, I think the ice cream drips are begging to be turned into kitty paws.

Yes, definitely.

Pipe two dots over the two center drips with thicker consistency royal icing. Let dry and pipe short lines on top.

Pawsome!!!

Paws or no paws? What do you think?

I think I know.

Package your pretties in the cutest treat bags, also from Sweet Sugarbelle. Purrfect to gift to someone special.

Hope you enjoy!

These cute cookie cakelets make adorable individual treats to celebrate with others. They’re party perfect, baked in tiny 5-inch pie pans.

Mix up some yummy chocolate chip cookie dough and add pastel confetti sprinkles along with milk chocolate or semi sweet chocolate morsels.

I used these 5-inch metal pie pans that I found at Home Goods and snatched up as soon as I saw them because they were so cute. They're probably long gone by now, but here are some I found online that are similar. You can also find aluminum pans in this size online.

When baking, just scoop even mounds of cookie dough in each pan, but don’t press it into the bottom. Let the dough bake to fill the pan shape.

When cool, pipe a thick border of chocolate frosting around each cookie and add a few more confetti sprinkles.

You’ll end up with six super cute cookie cakelets.

Serve them just like this …

… or add a tiny scoop of vanilla ice cream using a 1-1/2 inch cookie scoop.

Enjoy!

Look at these cute little sharkies. Did you know it’s Shark Week on the Discovery Channel and Shark Fest on National Geographic … and I finally made some cake pops to go along with it. I’ve been wanting to make these for more than a couple of years now, but I always think about it when Shark Week is over. Not this year though. I’m only a couple of days in to all the tv programming, so there's still plenty of shark shows to go and I’ll be chomping on these over the next few days. : )

Want to make some, too?

Start out by making basic cake pops (instructions here) rolling the balls slightly larger than usual. Then use the directions below to decorate them.

Obviously, red velvet cake is the only way to go here.

I didn’t really have anything perfect on hand for the fins, so I improvised by cutting curved shapes out of candy wafers.

There are two different shapes here. The top left is made by cutting a curved section out of the wafer and then cutting it again kind of parallel to the first cut so you end up with a small dorsel fin (top) shape.

The bottom shapes are made by cutting a small curved piece away from a candy wafer and then cutting the wafer in half. These are for the pectoral fins (side) shapes. These pieces will be attached to the cake shape before dipping so that when the cake pop is removed from the melted coating, the attached pieces will help create the final shark.

Like so.

Okay let’s decorate this guy…

* Take the round cake balls and shape into… well, I don’t know what I would call this… but, it’s curved and then rounded and plump on one end (the front) and pointed and thinner toward the back (tail). * I used these flat diamond shapes for the caudal fin in the back (yes, I totally looked that up.) But you can use whatever works. I just had these handy. Jumbo heart sprinkles could work too. * Attach all the fin shapes to the shaped cake ball using melted candy coating to glue. It’s okay if they look messy right here. Just make sure the candy coating is smoothed flat to the cake. If not, any bulk will change the shape of your sharks when you dip. * When chilled, not frozen, dip the end of a lollipop stick in coating and then into the bottom of the shark. Tilt the shark’s head up so when you insert the stick, you have more area for it to go into. These are on the heavy side and if you stick it straight into the middle, they will fall off. Having the heads tilt up also adds to the character of these I think. * When dipping, make sure the coating is melted and fluid. If it’s too thick, they will also fall off. For the gray coating, I added black candy coloring to white coating. But you can also make these a blue color and they’ll be super sassy. Let the sharks dry. Note: a couple of times, my caudal fins fell off in the coating. If that happens. just quickly remove them and then you can attach them separately after the shark is dry. * I used edible food paint to make the area underneath the shark white. * Let dry and then draw on big mouths using a black edible ink pen.

* For the finishing touches, draw on eyes with the black edible ink pen and then dot them with white candy coating using a toothpick. * Use a clean toothpick to draw on teeth. Dot and pull to a point to make them look sharp. * Draw on gills using a toothpick and gray candy coating.

Look how happy these sweet little sharkies are.

But maybe we should make one a little more menacing.

Duunnn. Duunnnnnn. Yes. That’s more like it. And more iconic. BTW these are much easier to shape and dip if you’re thinking about making some.

* Roll the balls on wax paper and begin to shape into a cone. Slide the bottom on the wax paper to make it flat. Continue shaping until the top is pointed. These are also angled to one side slightly. * Attach a dorsel fin to the back with melted candy coating and dip. Add pectoral fins if you like. They look cute both ways. * Dip and let any excess fall off. Let dry completely. * I also used edible food paint for the white undersides, but you can also dip these at an angle (almost flat) in melted white candy coating. Use a toothpick to coerce into a smooth line and let dry. The extra white coating will add some bulk to the look of your shark but that’s ok. You can also skip the white all together. * For the mouths, I used black edible food paint, but you can also use a black edible ink writing pen.

* To finish the look for these, dot on gray candy coating and place a black sugar pearl in position for the eyes and draw on gils. Let dry. * Use a clean toothpick to draw on teeth the same as for the other shark design. These are just a bit bigger. Dot and pull to a point to make them look sharp.

Okay, tell me what you think here. I wanted to make them coming out of water, but didn’t want to add more colors of candy coating around the base of the shark. So I crumpled up light blue and white cupcake liners, poked a hole in the middle and slid up the lollipop stick. I think it kinda works. These would make a big splash at a kid’s party, too.

Umm… definitely my kind of shark bite!

Hope you enjoy.