The Crystallised cookies, from A. and V. with love

Quite excited about
the upcoming baking tutorial, I put on my biggest smiles and I headed over to
V?s. When she opened the door she actually took a step back clearly stunned by
my obvious keenness (but, hey, I was just about to get a hold of her secret recipe,
remember?). And just like that I was finally led into the mysterious world of cookie
baking.

Quite a few hours
later, with flour spilled all over the floor, fingers covered with blue food
colouring (this thing should be forbidden by law!), a few cookies stolen by her
dog, and a few disastrous attempts to decorate the shapes ? I can finally proudly present to you our ?Crystallised cookies?.
And of course, I cannot skip the occasion to apologise to V. for my obvious
lack of knowledge within the field of baking. Well, I did help a bit (with the colouring mainly ? hence my dyed in blue hands), though unfortunately I should admit that my support was more of a moral support than
anything else.

Stage one: The dough!

Ah, it looks cute, doesn’t it?

Stage two: Baking the cookies!

Check them for
doneness occasionally. You are aiming for golden brown cookies and not for
coal-looking ones.

Stage three: Decorating the cookies!

Be bold! And let
your imagination run wild. But meanwhile ? please wear a glove!

Stage four: Our cookies!

Barney, quite shocked by the look of our blue cookies. Yes, we did try creating some
blue ones (and a combination of a blue and red as well), but as you can probably guess and also see - the final
result was quite disastrous. So for now we are keeping them only to Barney and
ourselves (and you, but you can keep a secret, right?). 

For those of you who have liked the final results move on to the next stage and get a glimpse of V’s recipe! 




Stage five: Crystallised cookie recipe

 *Please, use it
wisely. It?s highly addictive.

• Ingredients needed for the cookie dough:

1. In a large box
   cream together with a mixer the butter and sugar until perfectly smooth;
2. Add in the vanilla
   extract and the eggs;
3. Sift the flour in
   another bowl before stirring it with the baking powder and the salt;
4. Add the egg-butter
   mixture and the milk to the flour;
5. Take the dough out
   and knead it; if you find it too sticky to knead sprinkled it with extra flour;
6. Cover and chill the
   dough in the fridge for at least 30 minutes;
7. Roll out the
   ready-to-go dough on a floured surface until its around ½ inch thick;
8. Preheat the oven to
   180 degrees C. (350 degrees F.);
9. While waiting for
   the oven, start cutting the dough with the lovely cutting shapes you?ve prepared;(
10. Don’t forget to cut
    some smaller shapes within the already cut cookies? see Stage 1 for
    reference; They will be essential during the decoration process; 
11. Place the batch of
    cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet;
12. Bake the cookies in
    the preheated oven for around 8 minutes depending on the cookie?s thickness;
13. Cool completely
    before you initiated any art-related activities 😉 

• Ingredients for the
  Royal icing: