Today is reveal day for the Improv Challenge! This challenge is always fun and this month our two ingredients are strawberries and cream. Does anything say summer more than that? So I went with cream cheese cookies covered with frosting made with strawberry coulis for taste and color.
 Here’s to a Happy Summer!
Cream Cheese Cookies w/Strawberry Coulis Icing
 Cream Cheese Cutouts
 (from allrecipes)
1/2 cup Butter, softened
3 ounce Cream Cheese
1 cup Sugar
1 Egg
1/2 teaspoon VanillaÂ
2 cups Flour
1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
Cream together your butter, cream cheese, and sugar until
light and fluffy.
Add your egg and vanilla.Â
Combine your flour and baking powder andÂ
spoon into wet mixture. Mix. Divide your dough into
two pieces and cover and chill until firm; about 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.Â
On a lightly floured surface, cut out your dough.
Bake for 7-0 minutes until done.
Cool completely.
Strawberry Icing
(adapted from Antonia74-Cake Central.com)
6 oz warm Water
5 tablespoons Meringue Powder
1 teaspoon Cream of Tartar
2.25 pounds Confectioners Sugar
1/4 cup Strawberry Sauce
Pour the warm water in a mixing bowl.
Add the meringue powder.
Whisk for 30 seconds. It should be thicker and frothy.
Add your cream of tartar and mix for 30 seconds more.
Pour all the confectioners sugar in the bowl at one time.
Mix on the lowest speed for 10 minutes.
Icing will get thick and creamy.
Cover icing immediately.
Tale about 2 cups of icing out of the bowl.
Slowly pour in just a little at a time of the strawberry sauce.
Mix well.
Icing should begin to turn color and take on the taste
of a strawberry. Add more as needed.
Start by outlining and filling in the leaves on yourÂ
strawberry cookies. The leaves on real
strawberries are never perfect or the same,Â
and mine aren’t either. (That sounds like a good excuse
to cover a mistake, doesn’t it? :))
 Let all the leaves dry. I made 2 dozen of the cookies, soÂ
I just outlined and filled in all the leaves first.
Then I outlined the rest of the cookie in the strawberry icing. I went rather low on the top outline because of the danger of getting the strawberry icing on the green leaf. 
Fill in the body of the strawberry, then go back to the top where the leaf is and push the icing gently with your paintbrush. 
There you have it. When I made my frosting, I used a homemade strawberry coulis that I made last week, instead of a store bought sauce.(I’ll be posting the recipe for the coulis tomorrow) The fresh sauce gave the cookies a true strawberry look because of the flecks of strawberry. (you can barely see it in the pic) However, the store bought sauce might give a more intense flavor. Check out what everyone else made! The Freshman Cook is stopping by these parties:
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