Iced Christmas Biscuits - How to Cut Out Shapes and Decorate Cookies
Iced Christmas Biscuits are an easy and fun activity for the whole family to do together! We show you how to make and bake a basic vanilla flavoured biscuit suitable for making cookie cutter shaped cutouts. Children will love to help you with decorating the Santa, Elf, Reindeer and Gingerbread Man, Xmas cookies with royal icing. Furthermore, they make the best homemade gift ideas for the kids to pass on to relatives and friends. UK and US measurements are given.
200gbuttertake out of the fridge at least 1 hr before use
200ggranulated sugar
1 Eggbeaten
2tsp Vanilla Extract
2tsp Baking Powder
400gflouryou may need little more to get to playdough consistency
Royal Icing
350gIcing sugar
2Pasteruised egg whites or egg white powdersee blog post for more info, do not use regular raw egg white.
½teaspoonvanilla extract
½teaspooncream of tartar
Food Colouring GelYour choice of colours
To decorate
sprinkles/sparkles/ balls/ little fudge bitsfor decorating
Instructions
Christmas Cookie Cutter Biscuits
Place room temperature butter and sugar in a bowl and use electric whisk or cake stand mixer for 2 minutes to beat until light and fluffy. WIll take longer if doing by hand.
Add egg and vanilla extract, mix in for 1 minute.
Add the baking powder & ½ the flour, use a spoon to mix in.
Add the remaining ½ of the flour, bit by bit, it will get stiffer to stir. Check consistency, it should be like playdoh. Keep adding more flour until its right, if it gets too stiff add a bit of water.
Divide the mixture into 3 equal sized balls. Each ball will cover make 12, biscuits measuring 8cm.Put the 3 biscuit dough balls in a ziplock bag in the fridge for about 25 minutes or for quicker chilling, use the freezer for 10 minutes at this point.Tip! If you want to you can store in fridge or freezer to make more biscuits for another day? Check blog post for details.
Preheat oven to 175°C/ 340°F fan ovenPlace a sheet of parchment paper down roll the biscuit dough out on it. Until it is around 1 cm or ¼ of an inch thick
Transfer the parchment paper to a baking sheet.Use cutters to cut into desired shapes. Use the handle of a fork to remove and stuck biscuits.
Reroll what is left and continue on a new sheet of parchment paper, until there is no dough left.
Bake on 175°C/ 340°F for about 7-9 minutes. Keep an eye on them remove from oven before they change colour! Look for tiny cracks to appear on the surface to know when they are ready.
They will still be soft when you remove them, don't worry, once they cool they will firm up!
How to make Royal Icing
Mix icing sugar, cream of tartar, vanilla extract and whisked egg whites together in a bowl
Use a mixer on low setting until icing is smooth. You want it to be a thick consistency to pipe without running off the biscuit, add more icing if needed? Check the blog post for more info on consistany
Put royal icing into separate bowls for each colour and we used 4 colours. Plain white, red, green and black.
Use gel food colouring to colour each bowl of icing.
Place a spoonful of each into its own piping bag. Add some water to the remaining icing left in bowls to make a thinner icing to fill in larger areas on the biscuits.
Make sure biscuits are cooled before piping.Pipe the outlines on the biscuits with the thick icing.
The remaining icing in bowls, add a bit of water, to make it runnier and put in more piping bags.Use to fill larger areas outlined with the thick icing. A toothpick can help spread the thin royal icing.
The royal icing will be touch dry within 30 minutes. However, allow them to fully dry for a couple of hours before storing.
Once fully dried they can be stored on top of each other in an airtight container and stored at room temperature for up to a week.