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After the modest success of my last sugar cookie/royal icing attempt, I decided to try a project that was a little more ambitious. My friends and neighbors, Daniel and Nadia, were having a braai (South African BBQ) and I figured some fun cookies would be a great trade for some good grilled meat and whatever else was brought to pass.
Even though I really liked the recipe I used to make the bridal shower cookies, it was a very involved process with multiple refrigerations and weighing of ingredients than I have time or patience for. The following recipe, from The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle‘s blog, was just the thing. The recipe doesn’t need any chilling and has only basic ingredients.
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Sweet Sugarbelle’s Basic Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
227 grams unsalted butter
175 grams confectioner’s {icing} sugar
1 egg {room temperature}
1.5-3 teaspoons extract or emulsion {any flavor}
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
400-425 grams all-purpose flour
Instructions
Cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs and extract and mix well. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt, add to wet mixture little by little until well incorporated. Roll and cut cookies into desired shapes, dusting with flour as necessary. Bake cookies at 400 degrees for 7-8 minutes until tops are appear dry rather than shiny. Do not brown.
This recipe will produce two to two and a half dozen medium sized cookies.
Sweet Sugarbelle’s Royal Icing
Ingredients
4lbs {two bags} confectioner’s sugar
3/4 c. meringue powder
1 1/3-1 1/2 c. warm water
2-4 tbsp. oil-free extract or flavoring
Instructions
Add dry ingredients first.
Use your mixer’s whisk attachment to incorporate the sugar and meringue powder.
Add the extract to the water and slowly add it to the dry ingredients while mixing. At first the icing will be very liquid-like. Continue to mix it at medium-high speed until it is fluffy and stiff peaks form, about 7-10 minutes. Mixing times are approximate; stop mixing as soon as it becomes stiff. Over mixing and oil-containing extracts can keep the icing from setting up.
This recipe makes enough icing to decorate at least 9-10 dozen cookies. Royal icing will keep at least a month, in the fridge or at room temperature.
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Easter Bunny Cookies
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1. I added a tiny bit of water and a few toothpicks of Wilton blue icing coloring to the above royal icing recipe to make it appropriate for outlining the cookie cutouts.
2. I then added a tiny bit more water to make the same colored icing appropriate for “flooding” the lined cookies. Be careful to do this a few drops at a time. Once the icing is too thin, the only fix is adding more icing! Let the flooded cookies set for at least an hour.
3. Next, I mixed up a batch of “15 second” white royal icing. If you’re new to royal icing, this means that when you run a knife through the icing, it takes 15 seconds for the mark to disappear. Tip: To keep your frosting from crusting in between steps, put a wet paper towel in the bottom of a cup!
4. Getting the right shape for the rabbit face was a learning process. In hindsight, I should have sketched out what I had in mind before I started, but I am not one for patience or planning.
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5. The next step was the eyes and mouth. For this, I used Wilton black icing coloring and the same consistency as in step 1. I don’t have a very fine piping tip, so it was challenging to get all the details I wanted on the small cookie. I even experimented with using a toothpick to “draw” the face on. This was painstakingly slow and I abandoned the effort after only two cookies. If I could have a do-over, I would buy a finer piping tip, or save some money and use a plastic piping bag with just a tiny tip of it cut off. Let’s just say that my impatience, inexperience and lack of proper equipment ensured that every cookie was….well….unique.
6. The last step was a quick dab of pink for the nose and pink lines for the ears. I once again used the step 1 consistency.
The final result was cute, but not the least bit professional looking in. They still drew many compliments from the braii-goers. This is definitely a learning process.
I can’t wait to correct all my mistakes and incorporate what I’ve learned on my next batch!
