We've endured a breakout of nits and an entire weekend of Miss 3 waking up screaming all night long.
We've celebrated with our families and our friends (all the while NOT passing on headlice thank goodness).
It's been a lovely weekend.
I have a very strong opinion on the use of non-certified Palm oil and as a main ingredient in so many Easter Eggs and Easter chocolate we decided not to buy any this year.
(The Easter Bunny did drop of a Cadbury Freddo Frog Casket to each of our children. Palm oil free of course.)
So what do you make instead?
What will the kids love? Something sweet and something cute - that's what!!
What does the Easter bunny sustain himself with whilst delivering all of those Easter goodies?
Carrots?! Did you say Carrots?!
{Sugar Cookie Dough : Montreal Confections}
Ingredients
4 Cups of Regular Granulated Sugar
1 Pound of Butter (454 grams)
2 Tablespoons Vanilla
4 Eggs
1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
7 Cups All Purpose flour
Method
In your mixer cream butter and sugar together.
Add Eggs one at a time until combined.
Add Vanilla.
In a large bowl measure and sift the flour and baking powder.
Slowly add the flour mixture into the wet ingredients until a dough forms.
Split dough into two, shape into discs and wrap and refrigerate the dough for half an hour.
Flour your bench and rolling pin.
Roll out dough to 0.5 cm thickness and using a floured cutter cut out your shapes.
Place the shapes on a baking sheet lined with baking paper and freeze for a half an hour.
Bake straight from the freezer for 10- 15 minutes depending on your oven.
{Tips to remember: Use butter at room temperature, use a bench mixer with a large bowl or a large bowl with a hand mixer. This mixture make A LOT of cookies. I'm not kidding. You can freeze the cookies unbaked for a few weeks. Your Dough may be slightly sticky but you are using flour to roll out and the dough will absorb some of the flour.}
Ingredients
8 Tablespoons of water
3 Tablespoons of Meringue Power (I used Pavlova Magic, Yes the one in the cute plastic Egg)
Icing sugar
Lemon juice.
Method
In a large bowl add your water and meringue powder. Using a whisk mix these together until they a frothy. Add Icing Sugar, whisking until you have a thick paste. There is no measured amount, just keep adding until its thick and glossy.
Separate some of your mixture into 2 bowls add Orange gel paste to one and Green Gel paste into the other. You will need to make the icing into 15 second consistency. To do this you will need to add lemon juice drop by drop mixing until you have a smooth consistency that when you run a spoon through it settles back into a flat top after you've counted to 15 seconds.
I hope that makes sense. I will post a link to a youtube video that I like that gives a great tutorial on 15 second Royal icing here.
One you have gotten your colour and consistency right you are ready to use it on cooled cookies. I use disposable piping bags with a coupler and a number 2 tip for this project.
On your cookie pipe a border in orange and flood immediately, using a toothpick you can help spread the icing and smooth it out.
Let this crust for 20 minutes, you will see that the icing has crusted because it will lose some of it's sheen. You will need to let it crust before moving on to the green because you do not want the colours to run into one another.
Using the same technique pipe a border and flood with the green icing. You will need to wait 12-24 hours before packaging and the cookies will set best if left out uncovered in the open air.
This was my first time icing cookies like this.
The recipe I used was from Montreal Confections, I absolutely love her YouTube channel and blog and I was inspired to try something simple like these carrots and really learnt the basics of how to do it from watching the videos.
It was alot of fun, but it was time consuming and I still have alot of frozen shapes cut out waiting to be baked another day. Next time I do something like this I will do it using my Greek Yoghurt Sugar Cookie Recipe that you can find here. It tastes a lot nicer and even though the lemon juice helps cuts the sweetness of the icing I think that it would really help to use a less sweet dough recipe.
I hope that I have kind of simplified things for you so you can achieve a great looking decorated sugar cookie. It's not something that I see often in Australia but I bet they would look effective on a Party table and I will be looking for excuses to make them again and again for all occasions.
So do have a go and send me pictures of your results I would love to see them.
You can email me at staceytimms@gmail.com.
Until next time....
Stacey xx
What does the Easter bunny sustain himself with whilst delivering all of those Easter goodies?
Carrots?! Did you say Carrots?!
{Sugar Cookie Dough : Montreal Confections}
Ingredients
4 Cups of Regular Granulated Sugar
1 Pound of Butter (454 grams)
2 Tablespoons Vanilla
4 Eggs
1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
7 Cups All Purpose flour
Method
In your mixer cream butter and sugar together.
Add Eggs one at a time until combined.
Add Vanilla.
In a large bowl measure and sift the flour and baking powder.
Slowly add the flour mixture into the wet ingredients until a dough forms.
Flour your bench and rolling pin.
Roll out dough to 0.5 cm thickness and using a floured cutter cut out your shapes.
Place the shapes on a baking sheet lined with baking paper and freeze for a half an hour.
Bake straight from the freezer for 10- 15 minutes depending on your oven.
 |
| {As you can see this recipe makes a lot, you can halve the recipe. It was way too big for my mixer and I made a huge mess}. |
{Tips to remember: Use butter at room temperature, use a bench mixer with a large bowl or a large bowl with a hand mixer. This mixture make A LOT of cookies. I'm not kidding. You can freeze the cookies unbaked for a few weeks. Your Dough may be slightly sticky but you are using flour to roll out and the dough will absorb some of the flour.}
 |
| {Cutting out the Carrot Shapes.} |
 |
| {Spacing the shapes out as they will spread a little when baking} |
{Royal Icing}
Ingredients
8 Tablespoons of water
3 Tablespoons of Meringue Power (I used Pavlova Magic, Yes the one in the cute plastic Egg)
Icing sugar
Lemon juice.
In a large bowl add your water and meringue powder. Using a whisk mix these together until they a frothy. Add Icing Sugar, whisking until you have a thick paste. There is no measured amount, just keep adding until its thick and glossy.
Separate some of your mixture into 2 bowls add Orange gel paste to one and Green Gel paste into the other. You will need to make the icing into 15 second consistency. To do this you will need to add lemon juice drop by drop mixing until you have a smooth consistency that when you run a spoon through it settles back into a flat top after you've counted to 15 seconds.
I hope that makes sense. I will post a link to a youtube video that I like that gives a great tutorial on 15 second Royal icing here.
One you have gotten your colour and consistency right you are ready to use it on cooled cookies. I use disposable piping bags with a coupler and a number 2 tip for this project.
 |
| {If you look closely you will see I've use elastic bands to close the bags and sticky tape over the tip.} |
On your cookie pipe a border in orange and flood immediately, using a toothpick you can help spread the icing and smooth it out.
 |
| {You can see I've outlined and flooded the cookie, at this point I used a toothpick to spread the icing.} |
Gently shake your cookie to get a smooth result.
 |
| {Keep the bottom of the cookie touching your work surface and gently and quickly shake the cookie to smooth out the surface.} |
Let this crust for 20 minutes, you will see that the icing has crusted because it will lose some of it's sheen. You will need to let it crust before moving on to the green because you do not want the colours to run into one another.
Using the same technique pipe a border and flood with the green icing. You will need to wait 12-24 hours before packaging and the cookies will set best if left out uncovered in the open air.
 |
| {I made so many of these little suckers. They tasted really good too!} |
The recipe I used was from Montreal Confections, I absolutely love her YouTube channel and blog and I was inspired to try something simple like these carrots and really learnt the basics of how to do it from watching the videos.
It was alot of fun, but it was time consuming and I still have alot of frozen shapes cut out waiting to be baked another day. Next time I do something like this I will do it using my Greek Yoghurt Sugar Cookie Recipe that you can find here. It tastes a lot nicer and even though the lemon juice helps cuts the sweetness of the icing I think that it would really help to use a less sweet dough recipe.
I hope that I have kind of simplified things for you so you can achieve a great looking decorated sugar cookie. It's not something that I see often in Australia but I bet they would look effective on a Party table and I will be looking for excuses to make them again and again for all occasions.
So do have a go and send me pictures of your results I would love to see them.
You can email me at staceytimms@gmail.com.
Until next time....
Stacey xx
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