Recipe : butter cookies and Royal Icing

some were done by my girls

meringue powder used to replace egg white

part of the decorated cookies.

As usual, after attending any classes, I will try to bake immediately while the drive is still there...so after my class on saturday, I immediately went to buy the stuffs for my cookies....this time around I know I cannot avoid having my kids involved in the process...they are into baking these days...their favorite TV show now, Nigella..can you imagine that?

You can imagine how chaotic the kitchen with them, rolling the dough and insisted to decorate....*tiring* but we had so much fun and made me promise to bake again this weekend..*sigh*

so, in case anyone interested to try, please have a look at the recipe below, that was given by the instructor from sugarflours.

Butter Cookies

Ingredients

• 400 gm butter
• 250 gm sugar
• 2 eggs
• 800 gram redrose flour (they said you can use normal flour as well)
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla powder (u can use essense)
  

Directions

1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and castor sugar until light and fluffy.
   
2. Beat in the egg, (dont overmix, according to the intructor, it will make the dough becomes hard later)
3. Combine the flour and vanilla powder; stir into the sugar mixture.
4. Cover dough for 10 minutes, until the dough sets.
5. Preheat oven to (180 degrees C).
   
6. Bake for 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until lightly golden at the edges. Remove from cookie sheets to cool before decorate.

Royal icing

1. 1kg icing sugar
2. 25 gram meringue powder (you can also used 2 white eggs, but if you use meringue powder you can keep the cream longer)
3. 2 tablespoon vanilla powder
4. 6 tablespoon of lukewarm water (you can add more to make the cream
   

Mixed everything and mixing using the highest speed and beat the mixture until stiff peaks are formed.

For decoration, it's a bit tedious, you have to split the mixture into a few bowl, depending on how many colors you need.

1. the harder one for the outline (it's important, or else it will overflow and messy when you decorate)
   
2. make the rest of the mixer slightly watery by adding luke warm water bit by bit depending on how watery you need it.
   

You need to adjust the mixture by adding water, (bit by bit, nanti kalau terlebih susah pulak:))

the pic shows : the outline has to be harder then the rest, as the mixure tends to overflow without proper outlining.