Yesterday I made these NYC Subway Cookies!

For those of you who haven’t been to NYC, here are all the subway lines. So far, I’ve been on the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, A, C, E, L, N, Q, R, and S, but I would like to conquer all the lines before I finish college!

So here’s the story about how these cookies came about. A few weeks ago, I signed up for a cake decorating class at the Michael’s Craft Store near my house. This past Monday was the first day of class, and we had to bring plain, flat cookies with us. I decided to bake my own cookies and I used this recipe from the blog “Glorious Treats” (which is really cool btw). I pretty much followed the recipe exactly, except I wasn’t too worried about my cookies being perfectly level so I didn’t use the paint stir sticks or perfection sticks. And even though I bought parchment paper, I didn’t end up using it because my dough wasn’t sticky at all.

Even though the cookies came out really good and I would make them again, I wouldn’t suggest keeping the cookie dough in the refrigerator for 2 hours before you roll it out like the recipe suggests. Maybe my refrigerator is abnormally cold or something, but my dough was literally rock hard by the time I took it out of the fridge! I attempted to roll it out, but it just crumbled. I had to wait a while for it to warm up, and even then, I couldn’t roll out one huge sheet of cookie dough—I had to cut my cookies one by one. Nevertheless, they ended up coming out pretty good. I made 2 different sizes—4.25 in. diameter cookies and 3.25 in. diameter cookies. I got my cookie cutters at Michaels. Here are the cookies pre-decoration:

I brought the cookies to class on Monday night, but there wasn’t much time to decorate them, so I ended up keeping most of them plain. But I knew I still wanted to decorate them at home, especially because I wanted to use the new piping bags, tips, and other tools that we got in the kit for the class. The only problem was…I couldn’t think of a cute way to decorate them! I have no problem coming up with ideas about how to decorate cupcakes, but for some reason, I was drawing a blank with these cookies. An idea finally came to me when I was riding the subway yesterday. I looked up and I saw a white A in the blue circle, and I immediately knew that I had to make subway cookies!

There is a special place in my heart for the N, Q, and R lines (well, mostly the N and the R). I commuted to school last year, and I took the N or the R to 8th Street every single weekday. I developed a sort of love-hate relationship with the subway and commuting in general. I hated commuting because it wasted so much time and was frustrating a lot of the time, but I also loved it because I got to see my family, sleep in my own bed, and eat home-cooked meals every night. This year I’m living in the city and it’s bittersweet. I’m excited about having more free time and more of a social life, but there are definitely things I will miss about living at home. Luckily, home isn’t too far away in NJ and my brother is going to NYU (which is really close to my school—I go to Cooper Union), so we’ll practically be neighbors!

(My brother, posing with the cookies)

For my summer job, I usually take the A, C, or E. Here are my 6 favorite lines together!

More pictures:

This was my first attempt at using a real piping bag, and I was able to decorate these cookies without too much frustration, so I think it’s a good place to start if you’re a beginner like me! All I did was color white icing with Wilton’s icing colors—the colors I used were Golden Yellow, Royal Blue, “No Taste” Red, Kelly Green, and Black (for the lettering of the N, Q, and R). Then I iced the cookies with a spatula. Beforehand, I looked up the subway line symbols online, copied and pasted them into Word, stretched them out so that they matched the size of my cookies, and printed them. Then I cut out the letters and used them as stencils. After I iced the cookies, I let them dry for a little bit, then I put a makeshift letter stencil down on top, traced the letter out with a toothpick, and then used the piping bag with Wilton tip 104 to fill in the outline with either the white or black icing. They’re not perfect, but I kind of like them that way—it adds character. I like when you can tell that something is homemade and not mass produced. Hope you enjoyed these cookies!

I ❤ NY!