Butter cookies and icing recipe to decorate at Christmas

Meri Meri Christmas campaign photography

What better than cooking a cold day at Christmas time. I leave you an easy recipe that should always be on hand. The basic recipe for the base dough for shortbread cookies ideal for decorating. It is a very easy recipe to make, which I have been making at home for many years and my daughters love it.

Basic butter cookie recipe to decorate

Preparation

1. You can make the cookies in a bowl and beat the ingredients with the whisk or by hand, but it is always better and faster with automatic whisks.
2. Put the butter at room temperature in a bowl and begin to beat it together with the sugar, until it forms a creamy mass.
3. Add the eggs one by one, beating with the rods, until you get a homogeneous mass.
4. Sift the flour to remove any impurities and add it to the previous dough, mixing with the whisk. Give the dough a touch with cinnamon and salt.
5. Take the dough out of the bowl, even if it is a bit sticky, and knead with your hands with the help of a little flour, so that it does not stick so much.
6. Go kneading until there is a ball (you can also make two balls for better handling). Wrap the ball of dough in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
7. Preheat the oven to 180º with heat up and down.
8. Take the dough out of the fridge and roll it out with a rolling pin until it is as thick as you want the cookies to be (it is important not to leave them too thick or too thin; about 5 or 7 millimeters are perfect). With some cookie cutters in the way you like, cut the cookies and put them on the oven tray, on parchment paper.
9. Bake the cookies until they start to turn golden (about 15 or 20 minutes, depending on each oven).

10. Let cool before decorating.

Royal icing recipe to decorate butter cookie

To decorate our butter cookies we need two types of icing textures, I'll explain why...

— The profiling icing , which has a dense texture and which we use to draw the outline of the cookies and the details. We will use this with a pastry bag with a number 2 or 3 nozzle.

— The filling icing , which has a more fluid texture and which we use to fill the large areas of our cookies. We will use this with a pastry bag without a nozzle or with plastic bottles.

For a perfect result, the ideal is to decorate our cookie working with the two textures: defining the contours of our cookie with the outlining icing and "painting" the center with the filling icing.

Both types are made with this recipe, but to obtain the filling, all we will do is add water little by little to the thicker icing to achieve the more fluid consistency we need.

Preparation

1. Put the whites in a very clean and dry container. Beat them with an electric whisk until the tips are soft.
2. Now add the lemon juice and add the icing sugar little by little, without stopping beating, until you get a very firm consistency that does not come unstuck from the rods.
3. The glaze that we have obtained is the one for profiling. It is a thick glaze that will serve to decorate the contours and details of our cookie.
4. Now we need to color it using food coloring and turn a certain amount into a more fluid filling icing.
5. Put the glaze in different containers, as many as dyes you want to use.
6. Using a toothpick, grab some of the concentrated gel food coloring and put it in one of the icing bowls. Go adding coloring very little by little until you get the color and intensity you want.
7. Now we are going to fill the piping bag with our icing. Remember not to take it all, since you must leave something to turn it into filling icing. Before using it, the ideal is to let the glaze rest in the fridge for at least 8 hours, avoiding contact with air.
8. After decorating your cookies, you should let them air dry for at least 4 hours before wrapping.

I really hope that my recipe will serve you to spend entire afternoons cooking with the children at home. We would love to see your cookies on social networks with the hastag #lafiestadeolivia.

See you soon and happy holidays!