One of the fun things to do on a rainy day is bake cookies and make the kitchen full of freshly baked cookie smell! To me the more fun part is to decorate cookies with icing :-D
I have been collecting various kind of cookie cutters, Poodle Dog and Eiffel Tower make a very pretty Parisian theme. I wanted to play more with royal icing, I thought piping the Eiffel Towers was difficult, but it is actually quite easy especially with a very small writing nozzle (I used Wilton size #1 writing nozzle).
Iced Parisian Poodle Dog and Eiffel Tower Sugar 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
Equipments
Cookie cutters of your choice, I used Poodle Dog and Eiffel Tower Cookie CuttersWriting Nozzles Wilton size #1 and #2
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 fitted with size #2 nozzle 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 layer.
(Optional) Add some sparkling sugar on the fur of the poodle dogs :)
8. For the Eiffel Tower, thicken the icing by mixing in some icing sugar until a bit sifter, use a piping bag fitted with size #1 writing nozzle to pipe the Eiffel Tower designs.
