Happy Easter everyone! I really hope you have all had a wonderful weekend so far and that you have been surrounded by family, friends, food and loads of chocolate eggs!
You may or may not have noticed that I’ve been sharing a lot more recipe posts lately. I’ve always loved being in the kitchen, ever since I was little kid and I’m so chuffed that Nina James loves baking and cooking as much as I do because it’s such a fun thing for us to do together and it doesn’t hurt that you get to eat the end result, which is not the story when you’re making pies out of playdough.
Yesterday we whipped up these very morish butter cookies and then sat in Nina’s room and had a full on tea party. She even picked a dress out of her cupboard and changed for the occasion, it was so sweet!
Today in a new baking series that I’m starting in conjunction with Royal Baking Powder I’ll be sharing a really simple recipe for these scrummy butter cookies dotted with a speckled egg or two for good measure. These little circles of deliciousness are buttery, light and pretty addictive, so here’s a warning you won’t be stopping at one, two, three or eight! In fact, you may land up taking the whole plate and just hiding somewhere scoffing one after the other like some sort of cookie monster!
Making the dough is really simple, it does come out a bit sticky but that is normal and why you have to put it into the fridge to chill and firm up, but once that’s done it’s nice and easy to slice. These cookies can also be transformed really easily into any flavour you like just by adding an ingredient that you fancy. For example, a 1/4 cup of desiccated coconut gets you some toasty coconut cookies, 60 grams of chopped up dark chocolate will take care of any chocolate cravings, or you could add 60 grams chopped glacé cherries or roasted hazelnuts or rolled oats, you get the picture right?
INGREDIENTS: Makes ±24 biscuits
· 125 grams room temperature butter
· 1/3 cup icing, sifted
· 1 extra-large egg yolk
· 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
· 1 cup cake flour
· 1/2 teaspoon Royal Baking Powder
· A pinch of salt
· Speckled eggs
DIRECTIONS:
- Cream butter and icing sugar together. Add the egg yolk and vanilla essence and beat well.
- Sift the Royal Baking Power, flour and salt together in a bowl and then add it to the butter mixture and mix well to form a smooth, firm dough.
- Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and shape it into a log about 5cm in diameter. Wrap it tightly in clingwrap and chill it in the fridge for a minimum of 30 minutes or in the freezer until firm. *It must be firm so that it’s easy to slice.
- Cut the chilled dough into discs about 7mm thick and then place them on a tray lined with baking powder.
- Place a speckled egg in the centre of each cookie.
- Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180° for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown. Mine took 12 minutes to bake. Be sure not to overbake them as it will result in a dry, crumbly cookie and nobody wants that!
- Turn out onto a wire rack to cool. Eat eat eat.
A FEW TIPS:
- You can keep homemade cookie dough in the fridge for 3-5 days.
- If the dough is a bit sticky and hard to handle just put a bit of oil on your hands.
- Do not add too much more flour than the recipe suggests as it will result in crumbly cookies.
- If you overbake your cookies it will also cause them to dry out and crumble.
- Make sure your butter is at room temperature. Incorporating hard butter will result in overworking the batter which will detract from the cookies melt-in-the-mouth quality. Do not use melted butter, it will also make your cookies tough!
- White sugar will make your cookies crispier while brown sugar contains more moisture and will result in a softer and chewier cookie.
- Chilling the dough before and after shaping will help to retain the shape of the cookie. Well-chilled cookies will reduce spreading in the oven.
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