Loving Creations for You: Winnie the Pooh & Tigger Butter Cookies

My dear friend requested for some Winnie the Pooh cookies as gifts for her baby shower. She requested for this bake to be simple enough for me to handle so that I don't get stressed out making it :). So sweet of her! Here are some simple butter cookies in the shape of Winnie and Tigger, coloured with natural food colouring wherever possible. I bake simple stuff too, not just complicated bakes that take much time :).

I adapted from my old recipe, but with reduced cornflour content to make the cookies sturdier and survive being packaged in cookie bags.

Ingredients (makes about 45 Tigger and 36 Winnie cookies):
186g unsalted butter, softened
110g caster sugar
54g fresh milk
1/2 tsp salt
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp strawberry emulco
1/8 tsp + pinch of cocoa powder
2 drops yellow gel food colouring
2 drops orange gel food colouring
5g Queen's yellow natural powder food colouring*
395g* plain flour
20g cornflour

* use 400g plain flour if you don't have the yellow powder food colouring.

Steps:
1. Cream butter and sugar until pale and light with electric mixer or by hand like I do. If creaming by hand, take several minutes to do it.

2. Gradually add in milk and vanilla extract and beat until well combined with each addition.

3. Gradually add in sifted flours, yellow powder and salt. And combine with spatula until a dough forms. Divide into two equal portions.

4. Colour the yellow dough with 1/8 tsp cocoa powder, a chopstick dip of strawberry emulco and two drops of yellow gel colouring. Colour the orange dough with 1/8 tsp strawberry emulco, a pinch of cocoa powder and 2 drops of orange gel colouring.

5. Divide each coloured dough into two portions. Roll the coloured dough between two baking sheets until about 1/4" thick. Chill in fridge or freezer until firm. At least 30 minutes or overnight.

6. Using a reusable freezer pack as your work surface, lightly dust the rolled dough with plain flour. Lightly dust the cookie cutters and cut out the shapes. You may refer to my old post for notes on how to get nice imprints on cookies. For this batch, it is not necessary to get very good imprints as they are going to be covered by icing.

7. Chill the tray of cutouts in the fridge while preheating the oven to 160°C. Bake for 12-15 minutes, rotating the tray halfway through baking. The cookies are done when the base is a little bit browned. Be careful not to overbake or cookies will be browned and the colours will not show up well. Let the cookies cool on the tray for 5 minutes before transferring to cooling rack to cool completely.

8. Prepare black or dark brown royal icing. I used a mixture of charcoal and cocoa to colour the icing naturally. Pipe the outlines of the features on the cookies.