Iced Sugar Cookies

I helped my daughter Urmila & her friend Kalapi bake some sugar cookies the other day. They wanted to make cut out some interesting shapes & frost them. Unlike me, who was quite content to cut out stars & hearts & stuff without too much trouble, they painstakingly cut out lots of cute & interesting shapes .

It took half a day to do make these shapes & bake them & so the icing had to be postponed to the next. The royal icing was quite easy to make. & we had lots of colours. So Urmila & Kalapi had a grand time mixing colours into the icing & playing around with them. They used some sprinkles too. I am putting up some pictures of their effort. 
Pretty good, don't you think?

Ingredients

3 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1cup unsalted butter at room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

Method

Whisk together flour, salt & baking soda & keep aside.

In a bowl, beat sugar & butter together until light & fluffy. Add the eggs & vanilla & beat until combined. Add the flour mixture & beat until you have a smooth dough. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap & refrigerate for 1 hour or until firm enough to roll.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Grease a baking tray & keep it ready. 

Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Roll out on lightly floured surface to 1/4 inch thickness.Cut out desired shapes with the cookie cutter & arrange on the baking tray.Place the tray in the refrigerator for 10 - 15 minutes ( to prevent cookies from spreading too much & loosing their shape.)

If you are not going to frost the cookies, you might want to sprinkle them with sugar at this stage.

Bake the cookies for 8 - 10 minutes, or until the edges begin to turn brown.Remove & cool.

Frost with royal icing if desired. Be sure to let the icing dry completely before storing. ( This may take several hours )

For the Royal Icing

Ingredients

3 cups icing sugar

2 large eggs

2 tsp lemon juice

Method

Beat the egg whites with lemon juice with the hand mixer. Add the sifted icing sugar & beat on low speed until combined & smooth.The icing needs to be used immediately or transferred to an airtight container.

Mix colours as required & use for frosting. Urmila & Kalapi used some small knives, spoons & tiny icing bags made from butter paper for the icing.

 

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