Ombre blue snowflakes! Coloured mainly with blue pea flowers! Coated with glitter! OK the phone camera can't seem to pick up the glitter well...
A better glimpse of the glitter but still doesn't do the actual cookies justice *hmph*. Actual cookies are more shimmery than what you see.
I really love blue pea flowers! Check out the colours below... All unedited but so beautiful!
Top: 45g of boiled milk with 1tbs dried blue pea flowers
Bottom: after soaking the flowers for half an hour
I added a mere 2 drops if blue gel colouring to the strained blue milk just as an insurance against any browning that might occur during baking. Colour of milk didn't change much. That's all the artificial colouring I used!
The recipe for these blue ombre cookies is adapted from my earlier rendition of Mickey and Minnie cookies. The recipe contains milk so it is perfect for infusion of flavours/colours that would be difficult to achieve for shortbread.
Ingredients (makes about twenty 7cm snowflake cookies plus leftover dough):
186g unsalted butter, softened
110g caster sugar
40g milk*
35g blue pea flower milk* (see above for preparation instructions)
1/2 tsp salt
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
400g plain flour**
20g corn flour**
* You won't need all the milk
** Mix the flours and sift together. Divide into 5 equal portions. You may use all plain flour for a firmer cookie. Cornflour gives the cookie a more crumbly, melt in your mouth texture. Not advisable to add too much as cookies will be too fragile.
Note: If you are making one big batch of dough then dividing it up to colour with gel food colouring, use 54g of milk.
Steps:
1. Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl. You may use electric mixer or cream by hand like what I did. If creaming by hand, do take about several minutes to do so until mixture is light and creamy.
2. Add vanilla and salt to the mixture and mix well.
3. Divide the mixture into 5 equal portions. To each portion, gradually beat in milk in the following proportions:
Dark blue: 9g blue milk, 2g plain milk
Medium blue: 5g blue milk, 6g plain milk
Light blue: 2g blue milk, 9g plain milk
Very pale blue: 1g blue milk, 10g plain milk
White: 11g plain milk
4. Gradually fold in flours and form a ball of dough.
Ombre dough!
5. Divide each coloured dough into two portions in the following approximate weights:
Dark blue and plain: 16g and 144g
Medium blue and very pale blue: 48g and 112g
Light blue: 80g x2
6. Form 2 rolls of ombre blue logs, one with dark blue in center and one with plain dough in center. Wrap the logs in the following manner making sure not to mix up the ombre colours!
7. Chill the logs until slightly firm but not rock hard. Either extreme (too soft or too firm) and it's tough to cut the logs. About 10 minutes in the fridge.
Cut each log into 10 equal portions. Roll each slice until about 6-8mm thick with a rolling pin between baking sheets. You may choose to bake these ombre circles or cut out snowflake shapes.
Freshly cut dough!
8. You may chill the dough and bake at this point but if you choose to work really hard like me, use a toothpick/knife to make snowflake imprints on the dough. Or if you happen to have a snowflake pattern stamp, please use it! That would be a lot faster!
Painstakingly imprinting each line...
Finally done! *seeing stars*
9. Chill the dough for 15 minutes while preheating the oven to 160°C. Bake for 13-16 minutes or until very slightly browned at the base. Keep an eye on the cookies or the colours won't be nice! Let the cookies cool on the tray for 5 minutes before transferring to cooling rack to cool completely.
Freshly baked snowflakes!
Cooling cookies!
Store the cookies in airtight container. Like shortbread cookies, these can keep for a month.
So what did I do with the leftover dough? Let the kids play with it!
They are happy to have some leftovers to have fun with and to eat :)
Do eat the cookies about a week or two after baking if you can wait. They taste better after maturing :).
With love,
Phay Shing
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