Baking Cookies

I baked shortbread cookies with these adorable cookie cutters. The cookie recipe was adopted from Sweet & Spicy Living.

Ingredient

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) Unsalted Butter – softened at room temperature
• 1/4 cup Confectioners /Icing sugar (Sifted – Sift first before measuring)
• 1 cup + ⅛ cup  All-Purpose Flour
• 1/8 teaspoon Salt
• 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

I’ve used this cookie recipe before and love how buttery these cookies are, but for this Hello Kitty version, I added an extra ⅛ cup of flour. These cookie cutters are only about an inch, and the small details are too hard to cut out if the cookie dough is too soft. ⅛ cup was fine to add without making the dough too floury.

Instruction

1. Mix Butter and Sugar in a large bowl and cream together using a hand mixer or stand mixer.
2. Add vanilla extract and mix until combined.
3. Add salt and flour and continue to mix until mixture forms a soft dough.
4. Flatten the cookie dough between two sheets of saran wrap to about 3/8-inch thickness. Then, keep the flat dough wrapped up with the plastic wrap.
5. Put the flat dough in the freezer for at least a few hours. This way, you can prevent the dough from getting too warm while working. Warm dough is extremely hard to work with…

3. Cut the dough into shapes by using the Hello Kitty Cookie cutters. Use the cookie cutter for outlining first. While the outlining cookie cutter is still sitting, place the cookie cutters with facial details inside. Push it in hard enough to leave indentations, but do not push it through the dough.

If at any moment, the dough starts to stick to the cookie cutters, flatten the dough and put it in the freezer until the dough firms up.

4. Preheat oven to 350F. Place the raw cookies on the silicone mat or the baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

• I highly recommend chilling the shaped cookies while preheating the oven. When the cookies are warm, they tend to spread and ruin the shapes that you worked really hard for.

5. Bake for 15 minutes, or until the edge of the cookies starts to turn golden brown and the center is still pale and soft. Check on the 10-minute mark to avoid overbaking. Let cool on the baking sheet. Store baked cookies in a resealable container or plastic bag until icing.

Icing

Ingredient

• 3/4 tbsp Meringue Powder
• 1 1/2 tbsp Warm Water NOT hot
• 1/4 tbsp Light Corn Syrup
• 1 cup Powdered Sugar
• 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
• Gel food coloring of your choice

The icing recipe is adopted from Cakewhiz. I looked around different icing recipes online and found out lots of them use meringue powder as an ingredient.

What is meringue powder?

Meringue powder is an egg white substitute that’s frequently used in baking and cake decorating. The powder is primarily made of dehydrated egg whites, though it can also have stabilizers, sweeteners and flavoring added to make it a little bit easier to use straight out of the container. ^[1]

Instruction

1. In a deep bowl, add meringue powder and warm water.
2. Beat this for about 1 minute until you have a white and frothy mixture.
3. Add powdered sugar, corn syrup and vanilla extract and start mixing at medium to medium-high speed.
4. Continue mixing until your icing becomes thick and peaks start forming.
5. Color your icing with gel colors. Use a toothpick to add gel colors into your icing.
6. Mix with a spoon until the color is fully blended into your icing.
   • Once all icing ingredients were mixed, I added ¼ teaspoon of water at a time to get to the consistency I wanted. My icing was about “flood consistency.” More detailed explanations of icing consistency can be found here.

Meringue powder was a real game changer. By adding some meringue powder, the icing turned out sturdier and easier to handle. The color was better too. The icing was pure opaque white and the food coloring turned out more saturated.

This icing dries very quickly if exposed to air. Once the icing is made, I moved it to an airtight container, covered the icing with saran warp and closed the lid. I opened the lid and saran wrap off as needed when I was making more icing.

There will be a left-over icing. Icing with meringue powder can be stored in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.^[2]

Decorating

My original plan was to fill in Hello Kitty’s face with white icing then draw facial features, but the cookies were so small I kept filling anything and everything on the cookies (T_T). After struggling for some time, I decided to fill in the existing indentations following the bow, eyes, whiskers, and nose. The indentations made it so much easier to decorate.

Summary

Overall I love how these cookies turned out! Once I got a hang of dealing with the soft cookie dough and the consistency of the icing, the decorating process went smoothly. I’m so glad that I got these Hello Kitty cookie cutters. They made it possible for a novice cookie decorator like me to make such cute cookies.

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The post Hello Kitty Cookies – Simple Recipes appeared first on Simply A Homebody.

Because of Covid-19, I’m spending more time at home like the rest of the world. I’ve always enjoyed baking ever since I was a child and I decided to get back to my baking routine during this pandemic.

One of my favorite cookies is shortbread cookies. I love the gentle sweetness, and the buttery smells make them so irresistible. I found this cookie recipe at Sweet & Spicy Living and was able to bake great shortbread cookies.

Shaping Cookies

I should’ve been more prepared… I noticed that I had no idea where my cookie cutters went after I already made some dough 🙁 So I separated the cookie dough in two, wrapped it in saran wraps, and made a log shaped dough and a rectangle shaped dough. Then I popped them in the freezer. Once the dough became hardened, I sliced them with a knife and baked them.

Decorating Cookies

Today’s cookies were decorated as avocado toasts and pizzas! I used this icing recipe to decorate. I followed the exact recipe and the icing came out really stiff so I added more milk than it was listed on the recipe.

Controlling the consistency was difficult. The icing hardened up pretty quickly, so I had to work fast. Using a tiny metal tip with plastic containers were awkward for me, and I would need more practice if I were to tackle more complicated designs. Any parts that needed detailed work, I used toothpicks to control the icing.

In the future, I want to start baking more at home, so I will have plenty of opportunities to learn dessert decoration.

The post Back to Baking – Shortbread Cookies appeared first on Simply A Homebody.