Easter Fun 2015 : Royal Icing Sugar Cookies

What Easter means to my family is usually doing some Easter Egg hunts and enjoying Easter goodies like chocolate eggs and egg-licious dishes. I remember when my kids were younger, we would hide plastic eggs encasing candies, chocolates and even time coupons for games/television sessions! In fact we did just that last year too and the little ones had a ball. This year was kind of different though. My hubby was away on oversea business trip and some how the idea of prepping for the egg hunt alone just didn't excite me. So I suggested doing some decorated sugar cookies with them instead. Though the enthusiasm ain't that high, they went along with it haha!

 And this is the end result of 2 days of work. Although these aren't the pretties looking Easter cookies but I sure had fun making them. ;)  I was glad I finally get to use some of those cookie cutters that has been sitting in my pantry closet like forever haha!

Theme for this cookie project is call "Easter Tea Party" which I featured some tea pots and cups, Easter eggs of course and some Easter animals. I managed to get the little ones to decorate the Easter eggs.

 As you can see the designs are all pretty random and truly "one of a kind" patterns.

I still loved those tea cups and pots shaped ones...makes it look and feel like a tea party with these!

My cookie recipe comes from this book "Biscuiteers Book of Iced Biscuits" by Harriet Hastings & Sarah Moore. Although this book doesn't give much details on the steps on how you should decorate a cookie, but the main guidelines are there. Plus the pictures are so pretty! Truly inspired me to work on this cookie bake. :)

In fact, this is not the first time I have attempted Royal Icing Sugar Cookies. You can check out here to see my previous work. It was a birthday project for a friend's son's 1st birthday. The cookie for that earlier recipe is rather hard though. :P

Here is the recipes, but I did  make some slight changes to it...since I do not have salted butter at hand.

Recipe for Simple Butter Biscuits (makes 30 biscuits)
500g plain flour
180g caster sugar
250g unsalted butter
1/2 tsp salt
2 large eggs
splash of milk (I didn't use)

• Sift flour and sugar together into the mixing bowl and mix well.
• Add butter. Using the tips of your fingers, rub together the ingredients until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
• When all the butter is evenly mixed in, make a well in the center and add in the eggs and the milk, if needed. Then mix together till the dough is formed.
• Placed the dough on to  lightly floured work surface. Divide it into 2 equal portions. 
• Place one half of the dough between two large sheet of plastic wrap and roll flat of about 0.8cm to 1 cm thickness. Then chill it for 30 minutes at least before working on it.
• Using your preferred cookie cutter, cut out the shapes and placed the cut out cookies on a parchment lined baking tray. Placed these cookies back in the fridge while you preheat the oven to 170C.
• Once preheated, bake the cookies for 14-18 minutes till the edges are slight toasted and it's light golden brown. Cool the cookies on the rack before working on them.

Recipe for Royal Icing: 

( Note that to prevent the risk of Semolina, use pasteurized eggs
You can get pasteurized eggs here.)

2 pasteurized egg whites
225g confectionery sugar, sifted
Various food colouring (I used Wilton food colouring gel)

• In a large mixing bowl, beat the egg white till foamy. Add the sugar and continue to beat till it reaches stiff peaks.
• Divide the icing into the number of colours you would like to have. I had a total of 6. White, pink, green, blue, yellow and brown. A little goes a long way. Plus going pastel colours would most certainly suitable for this theme.
• Scoop them into piping bags and snip the tip (just a little) of the bag when you are ready to pipe.
• Practice makes perfect. So have fun with it! Just let your imagination go! Do remember to do a Line Icing (which traces the outline of the whole cookie) first. Let dry for 5 minutes before proceeding to the Flooding icing (fills up the surface of the cookie and thus giving it that overall colour). You can later do Line icing again to give it a more defined look after the flood icing has dried up. Refer to here for more pictorial examples.
• These Royal icing can be kept at room temperature for 2-3 days no problem. 

 It is never too late, or too troublesome to start working on something fun! Do try out this really satisfying and fun project with your kids..they will thank you for it! ;)