The cookie recipe is adapted from one of my favourite 'Sugar Cookies' bloggers (hope they wouldn't mind me calling them that), Bridget - Bake@350.
Most of the time I had problem with recipes that calls for cups and tablespoons (American measurement). Even using online conversion seems a little off. However, with the conversion provided by the book 'Flour' (the recipes in the book are written in both American measurement and metric measurement) recipes that calls for American measurement made sense.
For those who uses cups and tablespoon, just hop over to this recipe
For metric conversion you can use the recipe below which I had converted.
Cut-Out Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
Sugar 200g
Butter, cold 228g
Eggs 1 (approx. 50g)
Plain Flour 360g
Baking Powder 2 tsp (approx. 10g)
Vanilla Extract 3/4 tsp (approx. 4ml)
Almond extract 1/2 tsp (approx. 3ml)
Instructions
1. Preheat oven at 175 degrees celcius.
2. Cream sugar and butter in a mixer bowl using your mixer till combine approx. 5 mins at high speed. (I used a hand mixer with stand)
NB: You do not have to cream it till it is pale and fluffy as you had added baking powder which will raise the cookies when baked. Also, by doing so, the cookies will be less brittle and easier to handle.
3. While your mixer is creaming the butter and sugar, weigh out plain flour and baking powder. Mix the flour mixture and set aside.
4. When the creaming is done, add an egg, vanilla extract and almond extract to the creamed mixture and beat till just combined.
NB: You can add whichever flavour or extracts that you like.
5. Gradually add the flour mixture into the mixture and beat till just combined.
NB: Remember to scrape down the bowl, especially the bottom and the attachment.
6. The dough will be crumbly. Knead them together with your hand as you take it out for rolling.
NB: If you are staying in a country that is summer all year long, the dough will be a little hard to handle as the heat soften the dough when you work on it. I had read many suggestion on chilling your dough in the fridge etc to cater to this heat problem. But I think the best way would be to place your bowl dough over a bowl of ice packs. This way you can save the trouble of opening and closing the fridge door with your oily hands and also save water - that is if you are using ice bath to keep your bowl of dough cool. Another plus of using ice packs is that you can refreeze them! :)
7. Take a handful of dough and roll it onto a floured surface. Cut the rolled out cookies into desired shapes and place them on parchment paper over the tray and freeze it for 5 mins before baking.
NB: You have to work fast to prevent the dough from softening, making it harder to handle and the cut-out cookies from losing its shape when being transferred from the table to the parchment paper. For easy handling of cut out cookies from the table to the parchment paper, flour the table generously before rolling out the dough. To ensure clean cuts on your cookies, 'floured' your cookie cutters before cutting the rolled out dough by placing the cookie cutters in a bowl of flour. To reduce the amount of stretching as well as the cut-out cookies from losing its shape, use a small stepped palatte knife to move the cut out cookies from the table to the parchment paper.
8. Bake for 10-12mins. Till it is slightly golden. Let it sit a few minutes on the tray, then transfer to the cooking rack.
NB: The cookies will be soft to touch when hot. Hence, let it rest on the tray after baking till it is cool to touch before transfer to the cooling rack.
And you are done! Hope you are not intimidated by the little NB here and there. You just have to read up the recipe, keep in mind the important points (I had coloured them in blue) and you are good to go. I always read my recipe at least twice and write little notes to remind myself on the important points the day before I bake. Trust me, it will be much easier this way, the flow is there and you are practically performing magic in your kitchen. ;)
This recipe yields quite a fair bit of cookies. ermm actually a whole lot of cookies. I made half recipe and it filled up a box of my usual medium size 'Lock & Lock' container. You can keep the cookies in an air tight container for a week.
Well you are not exactly done with the cookies, unless you are eating them 'naked' =x
Time to decorate the cookies! You can do it the next day. No hurry :) The decoration is done by using royal icing.
Royal Icing was a problem for me where in LCB we used fresh raw egg white with lemon juice. To be honest, I do not feel comfortable feeding people with raw egg whites. Hence, I searched for recipe that uses Egg White Powder (you can get the powder from Phoon Huat. It cost about S$9 for 250g not exactly cheap but cheaper than Wilton which cost S$26 for 453g). For this batch of cookies, I used this recipe. It works well, however, I saw recipes that adds light corn syrup to the royal icing stating that the icing will be more elastic. Hence, easier for piping and also it also add a bit of a satin sheen to the icing. Maybe i should try it out the next time.
When decorating the cookies, getting the right consistency of the royal icing is the outmost importance. Another would be patience. You have to let the first layer dry before adding more details unless your are doing a wet on wet design.
I had read up quite a fair bit on royal icing, the many tips and even tutorials from the 'Sugar Cookie' bloggers that I follow. There are information on royal icing consistency, decorating tips, etc. Pop over to these feel blogs for inspirations :) Check them out here and here and here. They are amazing!
Reading is one thing and doing it hands on is another. Being my 2nd attempt, though the result was better, there are still a lot of improvement needed. It all boils down to practicing. During practices, I take notes on the mistakes that I had made as well as the things to improve on for better management, etc. Practice makes perfect. I believe the 3rd attempt will turn out much better. ^^
Decorated cookies can be a great gift for friends, party treats, wedding favors and even as cupcake toppers. Versatile and pretty. Give it a try :)
Hope you had fun making and decorating the cookies.
Tata
xx,
TBG
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