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Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Cold Reindeer Cookies

Hello everyone!
We are almost at Christmas! Now it's time to be stressed out, buy lots of things and eat too much! Oh, it wasn't that, was it?




These poor reindeer, all wrapped up in their scarves, are just waiting for Santa to come...






Cinnamon and Brown sugar Cookies

Ingredients (3 dozens aprox.)

  • 225g butter (room temperature)
  • 135g brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  • 330g flour
  • ½ tsp baking powder

Directions


  • Beat sugar and butter with an electric mixer until smooth and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until well combined.
  • Mix dry ingredients in a bowl and add them to the other mix gradually. Attention! It is important to mix the ingredients previously, otherwise, the baking powder could form lumps and this would lead to the cookies being baked differently.
  • Pre-heat the oven at 180ºC (350ºF).
  • Roll out the dough between two baking papers with a rolling pin until achieving half a centimeter of thickness (¼ of an inch). Cut out the cookies with your chosen cookie cutter and remove the extra dough so you can roll it out again. Put the cookies in the freezer for two minutes and transfer them into the tray when they are firm. Make sure the cookies have 1 cm between them so they don't bake together. Repeat this procedure until you have used all the cookie dough.
  • Bake the cookies for 10-15 minutes, until they are golden. Let the cookies sit out of the oven for 10 minutes before transferring them into a grid.
  • Let the cookies cool completely before decorating them.

Royal Icing

Ingredients

  • 200g confectioners sugar
  • 2,5 Tbs water
  • 1 Tbs meringue powder
  • Food coloring

Directions


  • Sift the sugar with a cloth covering the bowl to avoid cover everything in sugar. Add water (gradually) and meringue powder and blend with a spoon.


TIPS

  • Yes, I know it sounds tiring to sift the sugar but when the tip of the bottle or the pastry bag clogs for the fifth time because there is a tiny lump, you will wish you had sifted the sugar.
  • Add the water gradually. When you are mixing the ingredients you will think that there is not water enough but, believe me, it will be enough. If you put too much water, you can always add more sugar to thicken the icing but it's better to be careful with the water you add to avoid ending up with a lot of icing. So add the water gradually.
  • The icing has to be thick to trace the borders and, afterwards, the detailed decorations. However, for the interior of the cookie, the icing has to needs to be more fluid, therefore you will have to add more water to the mix (gradually!).
  • Have some smaller bowls prepared in order to add the food coloring.
  • When you use the food coloring, bear in mind that is very concentrated. Just a little will do! I use the tip of a toothpick to add the coloring to the icing. If you want a darker shade, you can always add more.
  • Cover the bowl that has the icing in it with plastic wrap while you are not using it. By doing this you will prevent the top layer of icing getting hard.
Reindeer Cookies:

Outline the cookies with the thicker icing and let them dry completely before flooding them with more runny icing.

Mix 1/4 tsp of cocoa with the icing to get brown icing (if you don't have brown food coloring). Keep adding cocoa (in small amounts) until you achieve the color you were aiming for.

Trace the basic outline of the reindeer. First the head and two elongations for the antlers. Once it is dry, complete the antlers by tracing small perpendicular lines to the ones previously done. 

Fill up the "face" with more brown icing and let them dry completely before adding the scarf. The eyes are drawn with an edible marker.

And that's it! I have put them in little cellophane bags tied up with a red ribbon to give them away to my family and friends.

Here are the pdfs for the recipes: Cinnamon and Brown Sugar Cookies and Royal Icing.

I hope you all have a nice holiday!

Anna

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