Easter decoration is everywhere, I found some cute rabbit and chicken cookie cutters, they are quite big and seem to be best for iced cookies. I always wanted to make iced cookies, I have heard and read about how difficult it is to get the right consistency of royal icing, I gave a try and it is actually not difficult at all, the consistency can be adjusted with more icing sugar or water. These simple rabbit and chicken designs also make it easier to pipe the outline and flood (fill) the shapes with royal icing.
Iced Easter Rabbit and Chicken Lime Cookies
Lime Cookies
Make about 12 large cookies, depends on how large your cookie cutters are.Ingredients
125g butter, softened125g sugar
1 pinch of salt
1 tbsp lime zest (or lemon/orange zest or vanilla bean paste)
1 egg
250g flour, plus extra for dusting
Cookie cutters of your choice, I used these:
Methods
1. Cream butter, sugar, salt and zest together until pale and fluffy. Add egg and beat until combined.
2. Sift the flour in and mix until just combined.
3. Cover the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes or until firm.
4. After chilling, roll the dough into 5mm thick on a lightly floured surface.
5. Use cookies cutters to cut the dough into your desired shapes, place them on a parchment lined baking sheet, chill them for 30min or until firm, this will prevent the cookies from spreading.
6. Preheat the oven to 180C. Bake the cookies for 12-15 minutes. Cool the cookies with the baking tray on a wire rack.
Royal Icing
Ingredients
450g icing sugar30g egg white/meringue powder
1 tsp cream of tartar
vanilla or lemon extract
150ml warm water
a few drop of food colouring of your choice
Methods
1. Put icing sugar, egg white powder and cream of tartar in a large grease-free mixing bowl, beat with a hand-held electric mixer until well blended.2. Add in water and extract gradually, beat on high speed until icing is very thick and glossy, about 5 minutes.
3. The soft-peak icing can be thickened with more icing sugar to pipe the outlines, and the runny icing can be loosened with a few drop of water to flood and fill the outlined shapes.
4. Keep icing covered in damped towel at all times when it is not being used.
5. Divide into a few bowls for different colour, add food coloring and mix well with a teaspoon.
6. Use a piping bag to pipe the soft-peak icing around edges of cookies and make designs.
7. Flood (fill) the cookies with the runny icing, allow the icing to dry completely before adding the next colour.
