Procrastibaking: Tai-kwon-dough! (Iced Butter Ninja Cookies)

(Forgive me for the appalling pun, I have had far too much exposure to them over the past few days. They are contagious, I tell you!)

Anyway, welcome to the first instalment of procrastibaking. Tonight’s recipe is adapted from from “Cakes and cookies”, by Malcolm Long.

Iced Butter Cookies

Ingredients:

Cookies:

200 g butter

200 g caster sugar

2 eggs

2 cups plain flour, plus extra *

Vanilla essence (optional)

Icing:

Icing sugar (lots)

Hot water

Food dye (optional, but they look boring with just white icing)

*I ended up having to add nearly a whole cup extra, so have plenty of flour to begin with! You also need to flour a board, rolling pin and your hands.

Recipe:

(Makes 20-30 large cookies)

1: Preheat the oven to 180 c.

2: Melt the butter slightly in the microwave. Depending on your microwave, this should take around 10 – 30 seconds. You don’t want liquid butter, but you want it to be slightly melted and soft. If you do over melt the butter, don’t worry. This will just mean you need to beat it longer.

3: Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. This may take some time, depending on the ambient temperature and how soft your butter was to start with.

4: Add the eggs, and beat well.

(pro-tip: if you crack the eggs one at a time into a small bowl or mug first, you can prevent adding rotten eggs to your mix. Thus, you crack the egg into said mug, see if it’s rotten, remove any shell fragments, add it to the butter/sugar mix, and repeat with the other egg.)

5: If you are adding vanilla essence, this is the time to add it. I used about two teaspoons, but you can use however much you want to. Just remember, that stuff’s strong. In this case, less can be more.

(Pro-tip the second: you want this mix to be as beaten as possible now, before the flour is added. If you beat it heaps after you add the flour, you will get very tough cookies!)

6: Sift flour into the creamed mixture. Using your hands, mix it into a smooth dough. If it is very sticky, as mine was, add a little more flour. Then refrigerate the dough, still in the mixing bowl, for 15-30 min (the softer the dough, the longer the refrigeration time. I had to refrigerate for 30 min, but the last time I made this mix it took only 15.)

(pro-tip the third: flour your hands before you mix! Also remember to flour your rolling pin, otherwise the dough can be very hard to get off)

7: Roll the dough out onto a floured surface until roughly half a centimetre thick. Using either a sharp knife or cookie cutter shapes, cut out cookies and place on a tray (remember, baking paper is your friend here!). Make sure to leave space between the cookies, because they’ll expand a little in the oven.

8: Bake in the oven for 10 min or until golden brown. It took me 12 min, but my oven’s really quite old.

9: Remove from tray, and cool on wire racks. You will most probably need to make several batches of cookies.

Your cookies are done!

Now, if you want to ice them, let them cool completely before icing them or the icing will melt off.

Water Based Icing:

1: get about a of cup icing sugar.

2: add small amounts of hot water and mix. Keep adding water until the mix is a thickish paste. If it gets too runny, add more icing sugar.

3: divide into small bowls, tea cups, or mugs (any sort of container will do, really). Add food colouring to each bowl, mixing until you reach a colour you like.

4: Ice the cookies. The icing will set quickly, so work fast!

(and now, Photos!)