Easter

I've been baking a lot during the easter holidays with the kids. These are our Easter cookies.

125g unsalted butter

125g caster sugar

1 medium egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

250g plain flour

Beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Add the vanilla extract and egg. Sift half the flour in the the bowl, mix and sift in the other half. Knead the dough until smooth, wrap in clingfilm and leave to rest in the fridge for half an hour. Preheat the oven to 180oc/ gas mark 4. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface and use your cutter.  Bake for 10 - 15 minutes and leave to cool before icing.

 

 

The icing is royal icing. It's slightly firmer than regular icing. You make it the same way though. Just add a litte water at a time until it's the right consistency. First you want to pipe around the outside of the biscuit with quite firm icing. If it's too runny just add more icing sugar.  Once the outside has been piped, you can add a little more water to the icing and 'flood' the rest of the biscuit. While the icing is still wet is when you create your patterns for the top.

 

 
 Left; the hearts are made using a cocktail stick to drop two circles onto the biscuit, the drag the cocktail stick through the circles.


Right; the small circles are made by lightly touching the icing with the cocktail stick. The larger circles are made by holding the cocktail stick in the icing for a few seconds.



 

Left; The patterns are made by making a circle with a cocktail stick and dragging it through the circle.



Right; this is just random swirls using the cocktail stick.