Cookies made by little hands




Most of the time I would shooed my girl away when she volunteered to help me bake. For new recipes, I prefer working alone so I can focus on the recipe. Yesterday was the Good Friday holiday, and her daddy is away on business trip, my girl was really bored. The weather was too hot and I absolutely had no wish to do take her for outdoor activities. I searched through the Internet but was unable to find an activity that was suitable. I saw a baking class for kids and then Eureka! - I can "conduct" a baking class with her at home :D

When I told her that I would let her do most of the baking, while I just "supervised", she agreed. I showed her beautiful photos of piped cookies on a book I borrowed from the library. I like books with step-by-step photos, and this Japanese baking book (which is translated into Chinese) has just that :) It has very clear instructions and is easy to follow.

This recipe is called the Icebox Cookies - the dough was left in the fridge for 1-2 hours, when it is hardened, it is then sliced into 1 cm slices. There is a similar recipe for cookies made using cookie cutter, but my experiences with using cookie cutter have not been good :p I always find problem releasing the dough from the cutter.

It is also the first time I made the icing with icing sugar and lemon juice. Fortunately that wasn't too tricky :) Surprising, it tasted mild and refreshing with the lemon juice. The cookies are not too sweet as I reduced the sugar.

My girl did most of the mixing and all the piping :) I was her assistant yesterday, measuring and advising her. Glad that she had fun especially the piping part, although she did complained about the warm kitchen - it was 35 degree Celsius outside - unbelievable weather! I told her she did a good job and I am very proud of her :)

Take from 甜点新手零失败教室 (literally means zero failure dessert making for novice) by 获田尚子

Ingredients (my slight amendments in pink)
Cookies
- 100g unsalted butter (soften)
- 90g caster sugar (75g golden granulated sugar)
- 1 egg
- 200g cake flour (25g corn flour & 175g plain flour)

Icing
- 100g icing sugar
- 1 tbsp lemon juice (key lime)

Method
1. Whisk butter until smooth.
2. Add sugar in batches, and continue whisking until the batter turns pale.
3. Add egg in batches, and continue mixing.
4. Add sifted four in batches, and mix using a spatula until no traces of four is seen.
5. The batter will gather and form a soft dough. Gather the dough and fold into a log shape (I shaped mine into long rectangular shape as I was not able to make a log shape :p)
6. Leave dough in the fridge for 1-2 hours or until harden.
7. Take dough out and slice into 1 cm slices.
8. Bake in 150 degree Celsius heated oven for 20 mins.
9. Remove from oven and cool off before piping.

10. Mix icing sugar into lemon juice. Stir with a spatula. Once the mixture turns soft, you can stop adding the sugar (I did the reverse, by adding all sugar into lemon juice, then add more juice to make a soft and smooth texture).
11. Put the icing into a piping bag, snip off the tip, and pip (I divided the icing into 2 batches, I added pink food coloring for the 2nd batch).
12. Let the icing dry up before storing in an airtight container.
13. Eat! :)


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