Saturday, July 2, 2011

Alphabet Cookies



We've just made a firm decision that we will homeschool our children, so I've been doing so much research into school curriculums this week - on the educational theme I decided to make some Alphabet biscuits.  The kids love these biscuits, but they do take a bit of preparation and are fiddly.  Don't make these if you are short of time!

I use a basic butter biscuit recipe as follows:

250g butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence
1 egg yolk
2 cups of plain flour
1/3 cup cornflour

Cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla until light and creamy.  Beat in egg yolk.  Mix in flour and cornflour until it forms a smooth dough.  Gently knead on a lighly floured surface, wrap in gladwrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.  This will make the mixture nice and hard so it can be rolled and cut.  Pre-heat oven now to 180 degrees and prepare 3 x baking trays.

Roll one half of the dough out between sheets of non-stick baking paper until 5mm thick.  Cut out shapes.  Re-roll and repeat until dough is used and then do the same for the second half of dough.  Its not the easiest dough to work with - you can roll it out flat and then refrigerate it until hard again, then cut the shapes out.  I use a sharp steel spatula to scrape my shapes off the baking paper into the trays.

Bake for 10 - 12 mintues, or until lightly browned.  Allow to cool slightly then transfer to cooling racks.  Ice with a basic icing or with fondant.

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