Thank you cookie for the teacher.... the classic cookie cutter recipe

Hello friends!

Here you are in your summer, where down under we have embarked on our winter - though nothing quite like yours - yet it's cold enough!  Our climate here would be similar to Florida's I think - our winters barely go anywhere near 0 degrees.  Doesn't stop my envy of your summer, but I'm looking forward to the spring.

The year is just rushing past and I'm aware that many of your kids are finishing up school for the year, so I thought I would share with you a cute gift idea whilst also sharing my failsafe cookie cutter recipe.  I've tried many, many others and always return to this one.  It's from Nigella Lawsons' How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking and has many recipes I go back to again and again.

The great thing about this cookie cutter recipe is you can flavour it quite easily with oil flavoring.  I used LorAnn Oils Apple Flavor to both the cookie and the icing, you only need a few drops in the dough and 1 drop in the icing.  It goes a long way.  You can use the oil in candy and chocolate too.

Let your kids do the baking and decorating with you too!


Ingredients: (this will make 20 large apples or 50 small ones)
Cookies
175g unsalted butter
200g caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
400g strong white flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 drops lorann flavour, if desired.

Icing
300g icing sugar, sieved, with coloring and flavour.

Method:
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add eggs, one by one and then the flour, baking powder and salt until it becomes a dough.

Divide in half and wrap each half in clingfilm in a disk.  Refrigerate for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees c
After refrigeration, roll out the dough one disk at a time over a floured surface, dust your cookie cutter in flour and cut out your shapes.

Place on greased tray and bake for about 10-15minutes until golden on top.

Cool on tray and move to a cooling rack. after 10 minutes.  Ice as desired!



You can find more step-by-step cooking from scratch posts and much more at my blog, Frills in the Hills - the fabulous life of our family of five - the fun, the food and the frugality.  Now also tragically on facebook and twitter...