Snail Shortbread Cookies

I had some leftover shortbread dough in the freezer that needed to be cleared before my next intensive bake. Not wanting to stress myself out, I chose to make these absolutely easy cookies!

Mama had some bits of leftover pink dough that turned into a rose!

I personally prefer natural flavours and colours for the swirl like green tea or chocolate, instead of these bright colours. The feelers are melon seeds with a dab of chocolate at the tips. The I had less red dough so I rolled it thinner than the blue one.

I will type out the recipe and steps of making these for your reference although I didn't use these exact amounts for clearing leftover dough.

Ingredients:
50g icing sugar
100g unsalted butter
130g plain flour*
20g corn flour*
1/8 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
Gel food colouring or Matcha powder/cocoa powder**

Melon seeds (split into half lengthwise)
Compound  milk or dark chocolate

*You may choose to use all plain flour or use up to 1:1 ratio of plain and cornflour. More cornflour would make the texture more crumbly and melt-in-your-mouth.

** If you are using Matcha powder, include 1 tsp of matcha powder. If you are using cocoa powder, include 2 tsp of cocoa powder. I would prepare the coloured and plain dough separately if I use matcha or cocoa powder.

Steps:
1. Sift together icing sugar, flours and salt. Cut the softened butter into the flour mixture using a knife or you could rub in and then form a ball of dough with your fingers while adding vanilla extract.

2. Divide the dough by weight into ratio of 2:3. Colour the smaller portion with food colouring. If you are using matcha or cocoa powder, it is best to separate all ingredients into the ratio of 2:3 and prepare the dough separately, keeping in mind to remove the same amount of flour as the amount of matcha/cocoa that you add. Sift the cocoa/matcha together with flour and sugar.

3. Prepare two pockets of baking sheet. One with width of 10cm and another with width of 15cm. Place the coloured dough in smaller pocket and plain dough in bigger pocket. Roll to thickness of about 4mm.

4. Chill the dough in fridge for 15 minutes. Carefully place the plain dough on top of coloured dough as shown below, making sure that they are aligned.

5. When the dough has softened a bit,  carefully make a tight roll starting from the right side of picture above.

You may want to round out the dough where the snail head should be.

6. Chill the rolled dough until firm. About 15 minutes. Use a knife to cut slices of about 6mm thick.

7. Place the slices on baking tray lined with baking sheet. 

8. Add in the melon seeds for the feelers.

9. Chill the tray of snails for 15 minutes before baking in preheated oven at 160°C for 12-14 minutes.  Keep an eye on them. When the base is lightly browned, the cookies are done.

Freshly baked!

10. Melt some compound chocolate and add on the eyes, mouth and tips of feelers with a toothpick.

Store in airtight container when completely cooled. These can keep well for a few weeks.

I am submitting this post to Best Recipes for Everyone Jan & Feb 2015 Event Theme: My Homemade Cookies organized by Fion of XuanHom’s Mom and co-hosted by Victoria Bakes.

With love,
Phay Shing