Springtime is the perfect season to make these sweet little sugar cookies. Wonderful for picnics in the park, birthdays or anytime you want to bring a little floral touch to your tea table.
Ingredients:
Sugar Cookie Dough
1 egg
1/2 cup or 113g unsalted butter - at room temperature
1/2 cup or 100g white sugar
2 cups or 240g flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
Vanilla extract - you can also used other flavours here such as lemon zest, orange zest, cinnamon, coffee etc.
Icing:
Icing/confectioners sugar
Milk or water
Yellow food colouring - I used a tiny sprinkle of turmeric
Oven: 190c or 374f
Notes: The basic cookie dough is not overly sweet as they are designed to be iced. The dough can also be used to make jam thumbprint cookies as well.
Method:
Cream the butter and sugar together and then add in the egg and vanilla - I used three drops of vanilla. Once mixed, add the flour, baking power and salt. Bring together to form a stiff dough. Place dough into the fridge to firm for a couple of hours. You can also freeze the dough to use later. When you're ready to bake roll out the dough onto a floured surface. I made my cookies about 0.5 cm thick and used flower shaped cookie cutters. Bake the cookies in a pre-heated oven for about 7-12 minutes, until lightly golden around the edges.
To make the icing, combine your icing sugar with a tiny drop of liquid, add more a little bit at a time until you get a consistency you like. The icing sugar only needs a small amount of liquid and it's easy to make it too runny, so best to only add a tiny bit of liquid at a time. You need the icing to be quite stiff so it does not run off the edges of the cookies. You can use water or milk as your liquid. I used milk as it makes the white icing a bit more opaque. For the yellow flower centers I added a tiny sprinkle of turmeric, turmeric is a strong dye and only a tiny bit is needed here.
Once the cookies are cooled its time to add the icing. Make sure to let the white layer dry for a while before adding in the yellow centers. I used the back and the handle of a tea spoon to push the icing out into the petals. You can also use a piping bag if you prefer. Leave the cookies to dry for several hours before storing them in an airtight container. I've found these last well for a week or so - that is, if they are not all eaten up within the first couple of days.
The daisy sugar cookies were included in Issue 3 of Meadow Afternoon. Watch the full Issue here: