I don't really care for pink, I'm more into darker colours like black and purple - but this was for a good cause, so i thought, heck why not. So instead of wearing a pink cardigan or shirt like everyone else, I wore pink floral tights and black shirt and skirt, ha!
I thought I'd get involved this year - I did the 'Race for Life' like erm.. a few good years ago, so this is my contribution to fighting cancer - with cupcakes and cookies!
I don't have a proper ribbon cookie cutter, but its quite easy to make a stencil and just use that to cut around the cookie dough. But it does take aaages! That's dedication or so I've been told...
I could have used the standard sugar cookie recipe, but I wanted these to be crisp and crunchy and also because the royal icing on these cookies can make the sugar cookies a bit soft, which you don't really want. I had lots of fun with these as you can see...
Ingredients for the cookies:-
115g unsalted butter
75g castor sugar
150g all-purpose flour plus extra for rolling
6 tblsp cornflour
1tsp vanilla extract
Method:-
Preheat the oven to 180C Gas Mark 4. Grease and lightly flour a few baking trays.
Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Fold in the flour, cornflour and vanilla essence until you have a dough that you can roll out. You will need to get stuck in and use your hands for this!
Flour a worktop surface and roll out your dough to a thickness of 1/4cm. Cut the dough into the ribbon shapes. I don't actually have a proper cutter so I just used a stencil and a sharp knife. Chill in the fridge for about half an hour to stiffen the dough and avoid the cookie shape from changing too much.
Bake on top shelf for about 10 mins or until lightly golden brown. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.
Royal icing:-
2 large egg whites
2 tsp lemon juice
230 g icing sugar
red food colouring
Method:-
In a clean glass or ceramic or metallic bowl, (ie. not plastic!) beat half the egg whites and half the lemon juice with your mixer on a slow speed. Slowly add the icing sugar until it begins to stiffen and form light peaks, similar to that of a meringue mixture. Add a few drops of red colour to get the desired 'pink' hue.
Instead of transferring to an icing bag, I just used a small plastic bag - like a sandwich bag and snipped one corner to resemble a small icing bag. Transfer half the mixture to the bag.
Very carefully trace the edges with the icing to make a border around the corners.
With the remaining mixture, add the other egg white and tsp of lemon juice to make a thinner consistency with the icing. As before, use a small sandwich bag to 'flood' the cookies, once the outline has dried. This makes it so much easier to ice the cookies. Keep any remaining icing to one side for use later on cupcakes.
Ingredients for cupcakes:-
115g butter
130g light brown sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
195g all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
60ml whole milk
Method:-
Preheat the oven to 180C or gas mark 4.
Line a muffin tin with 12 cupcake liners.
Using an electric beater or whisk, beat the butter and sugar for a few minutes until light and fluffy and the sugar and butter lighten in colour. This will take you about 4 minutes or so. Add the eggs, one at a time beating quite thoroughly after each addition. Add the vanilla essence.
Sieve the flour, baking powder and salt and add half of this to the egg mixture. Beat until combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and pour in half the milk. Beat again until combined and repeat the flour and milk process until finished, alternating between the two.
Immediately, fill the cupcake liners and bake for about 20 mins. Don't forget to rotate the tray about half way through if you have a gas oven, to ensure evenly cooked.
You should have enough mixture to make 24 small-ish cupcakes or 20 decent sized cupcakes.
Remove from oven and leave in tray for a few minutes. Remove and then place cupcakes on a wire rack to cool. Don’t forget to remove from the muffin tray!
For the icing:-
250g icing sugar
125g butter
2 tblsp whole milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
food glitter
Method:-
With your hand mixer or food processor, cream butter and icing sugar and vanilla essence until smooth. Add the milk 1tblsp at a time. If mixture still feels too stiff add some more milk. If you want to pipe the frosting, I usually use the largest star one, this gives a lovely swirl effect.
With the remaining pink royal icing I had left over, I used this to create little ribbons on the the top of the frosted cupcakes.
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| Lots of pink! |
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