The Craft Room had their stall at the Expat Expo, Basel – Did you visit us? If you passed us, hopefully you were able to grab one of Helen’s home made sugar cookies!
The beauty of sugar cookies is that you can stamp them with images and they keep their shape once they’re baked. You can personalise them depending on the occasion, just stamp them with whatever image you like! They keep for a week in an air-tight container and they even post well. If sending them as a gift. you can often find pretty and cheap patterned tins or air-tight plastic tubs at Flying Tiger in Basel or TEDi in Weil am Rhein which make great packages and can be re-used once the cookies have been devoured by the lucky recipient!
Why don’t you try making them yourself? Recipe below, including German translations of some of the ingredients.
Recipe – makes around 50 4-cm cookies.
Ingredients:
- 1 egg, beaten
- 225g (80z) softened butter in cubes,
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 200g (7oz) caster sugar (Feinster Back Zucker)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder (Backpulver)
- 415g (14.5 oz) plain flour (Weissmehl)
Method:
- Preheat your oven to 200°C (180°C Fan).
- Line a large baking tray or two small baking trays with baking parchment and set aside.
- If you have a stand mixer, using the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar together until white and fluffy (this can take between 3 and 5 minutes – you want it to look like whipped icing). If creaming by hand, use the back of a wooden spoon and once the sugar and butter is combined, beat hard until the mixture is pale, light and fluffy.
- Stir the vanilla essence into the beaten egg and beat into the butter and sugar mixture, adding a little at a time and beating hard between each addition so the batter does not split.
- Sift the flour and baking powder together and add to the batter.
- Using a silicone spatula, gently fold the flour into the batter until you have a shaggy dough. Press the dough together using your hands in a wiping motion around the bowl and shape into a ball.
- Divide the ball into two or three smaller balls so you have a manageable size to roll out.
- On a floured surface and using a floured rolling pin, roll the dough out to about half a centimetre thick.
- Using a cookie cutter, cut out the shapes and transfer to the lined baking tray using a palette knife or fish slice, retain the scraps.
- Once the cookies are on the baking tray, if your cutter does not automatically stamp an image onto the cookie, use your stamp on the cookies to create the desired image.
- Repeat rolling out the remaining balls of dough, cutting and stamping the cookies.
- Gather up all the scraps and press into a ball, roll out and continue to cut and stamp, I’d recommend only doing this once as on the cookies can get tougher the more you handle the dough.
- Bake 4cm biscuits for 4-5 minutes until they are pale and lightly golden – do not let them turn deep golden or brown.
- Transfer to a wire cooling rack. If you like, you can ice the cookies once they have cooled completely.
- Package in pretty cellophane bags or in a grease-proof paper lined tin.
Remember to share with your friends!
