Rainbow Cloud Shortbread Cookies

Instead of bringing cakes to school, my little one is bringing cookies for birthday to share with friends :).

Cheery rainbows!

I followed Guai Shu Shu's easy to remember ratio of the basic ingredients (1:2:3 for sugar:butter:flour) to create this simple cookie. I made a cloudless version some time back. My kiddo requested for clouds to be added this time so there's more work for me! I replaced some plain flour with corn flour so that the cookies have a softer, more crumbly and pleasing texture. I reduced the baking temperature too to reduce the chances of browning.

Ingredients (makes 36-40 rainbows):
100g icing sugar
200g unsalted butter
280g plain flour
20g cornflour (you may replace with plain flour)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
Gel food colouring

Steps:
1. Sift icing sugar and flours together. Rub in butter until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add vanilla extract and mix well. Knead the mixture until a dough forms.

2. Portion the dough in the following manner:

-Red: 81g
-Orange: 69g
-Yellow: 56g
-Green: 44g
-Blue: 31g
-Purple: 19g
-Uncoloured: 6g

-Excess uncoloured for clouds.

Place the colored dough and 6g of uncoloured dough in quart sized ziplock bags. Please use this size only for the respective portion of coloured dough to work. Add gel food colouring for respective colours.

3. Roll the remaining uncoloured dough between two baking sheets until about 5-6 mm in thickness. Refrigerate the dough.

4. You may refer to my old post on how to shape the rainbows. Here's a quick pictorial summary of how to do it:

5. Line baking trays with baking sheet and preheat oven to 160°C.

6. Cut the rainbow log to thickness of about 5-6mm. You may mark out the positions to cut.

Cut each rainbow circle in half and place on baking tray. You may bake it at this point if you are making cloudless rainbows.

7. Use a small flower cutter to cut out clouds from the flat layer of uncoloured dough. Cut a bit of rainbow off at both ends and attach the clouds. Use your fingers to nudge the dough a bit in places where the rainbow is a bit out of shape. Gently press the joining part of the rainbow and clouds together. If the dough is too soft to work with at any point, simply refrigerate it for 10 minutes before continuing. Similarly, if the dough is too hard, just leave it out at room temperature for a while until soft enough.

8. Chill the rainbows in the fridge for 15 minutes before baking for 12-14 minutes.  Be careful not to overbake to prevent it from browning.

Hope these homely colourful cookies brighten up your day :).

Blessed birthday my little one!

With lots of love,
Phay Shing