These are modelled after the macarons that appear on the cover page of my Creative Baking: Macarons book. Shortbread cookies have the advantage of containing less sugar as decoration with royal icing is kept to the minimum. The sugar content in the cookie dough is not too high either.
I combined the ingredients together in a different way from how I did it previously. I have been using the method of cutting butter into flour/sugar mixture but thought of using the creaming method this time round to incorporate the colouring/ flavoring with minimal kneading after flour is added.
I made templates using clear plastic files to cut out the dough since I don't have cookie cutters for these designs. Very tedious but at least I don't and up having a huge collection of cookie cutters that I probably just use once in a lifetime. You may check out this post on how to make your own templates here.
Homemade templates and knife I use for cutting cookie dough
Ingredients:
(makes about 60 ice-cream cone and 60 cupcake cookies. About 4cm in size)
Pink/red dough
70g icing sugar
140g unsalted butter, softened
190g plain flour
20g cornflour (you may replace with plain flour)
1/4 tsp strawberry paste
1/8 tsp white gel food colouring (optional)
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
Few drops of red gel food colouring
Brown dough
60g icing sugar
120g unsalted butter, softened
165g plain flour
5g cocoa powder
10g corn flour
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
Blue dough
60g icing sugar
120g unsalted butter, softened
165g plain flour
15g cornflour
1/4 tsp salt
Blue gel food colouring
Steps:
1. Use an electric mixer to cream butter, salt and icing sugar until pale and fluffy.
2. I will use the pink dough for illustration here. Add any liquid flavouring/colouring/extracts and mix well.
3. Add sifted plain flour and cornflour (and cocoa powder for brown colour) in a few batches. Mix until well combined with a spatula.
4. Portion out about 50g of pink dough and colour it red. Divide the rest of the pink dough into 4 or 5 batches. Place each batch between two baking sheets and roll to thickness of 4mm. Freeze or refrigerate until firm. Roll the brown and blue dough to about 5mm thick. Roll the red dough to about 8mm thickness. These thickness don't have to be too precise.
5. In order to create the ice-cream cone, use the template to cut out the outline on the brown dough. Return the dough to freezer when it softens too much to work with. I use a small knife to trace the outline with the help of the homemade plastic template. Place the cutouts on the baking tray lined with baking sheet. I find it helpful to place the dough on reusable freezer packs to prevent the dough from softening too fast.
6. Cut out the pink scoop of ice-cream and attach it to the base cut-out.
7. Sprinkle some rainbow sprinkles on the scoop of ice-cream. Gently press the sprinkles onto the cookie dough. Refrigerate the tray of cookie cut-outs while preheating the oven to 150°C.
8. For the cupcake cookies, cut out the blue base.
9. Cut out the pink cake and stick on top.
10. Use a drinking straw or a small circle cookie cutter to cut out the cherries. Carefully press the dough together where the boundaries meet.
11. Carefully sprinkle some chocolate rice on the pink cake. Chill the tray of dough cutouts.
12. Bake at 150°C for 14-17 minutes at the middle rack. Be careful not to brown the cookies.
After two days of hard work, here's what I achieved! I still had two-thirds of the cupcakes left unbaked!
Prepare white and brown royal icing. Use cocoa powder to colour the icing brown. Pipe the details on the cones and cupcakes cases.
Let the icing dry completely before storing in an airtight container.
I had to pack all 100 individually so it really tested my patience :p.
With love,
Phay Shing
Hi Phay Shing, they are too pretty to eat it. I will try making this for Christmas.
ReplyDeleteHi Amy, you can make other designs using the same technique for Christmas cookies :)
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