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Saturday 31 August 2013

Butter Cookies and Writing with Icing



It's not very often that I am called to 'write' with icing and I admit I'm not particuarly good at it, but I will have a go.  Here are a couple of cakes I've made and written on this year.


I practised on a spare bit of fondant for this cake I made for my Mum.

And it was this cake which attracted the attention of Cake Decorating Store who kindly offered me the opportunity to choose a product from their website to review here at Farmersgirl Kitchen.

I chose this Wilton's Make-Any-Message letterpress set as I thought it would be helpful when I have another icing writing project to complete. There is also a Wilton Easy Pipe Script Message Set but I wanted to have the flexibility of making my own messages. The Letterpress is easy to use, you do need to trim the letter pieces after separating them or they don't fit into the slide bar. 


I made a simple Butter Cookie recipe which makes a nice firm cookie for cutting and shaping.  I also had the chance to try out my Salter Heston Blumenthal Precision Rolling Pin as the dough was to be 1/8 in or 3mm thick and it worked brilliantly giving me a nice even dough.  The letters are quite large and only in upper case so I had to choose short words for a my cookies.  A cake would give more opportunities for longer words!


Here are the baked EAT cookies, which would work perfectly well without the icing as well as being a really easy guide for piping the letters, giving a nice even size.

Butter Cookies
2 1/2 cups (350g) plain flour
1 1/2 sticks (180g) butter, cubed
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup (140g) icing sugar
1 tbsp lemon zest
1 egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Using a stand mixer with paddle (K) attachment or food processor with dough blade, mix together the flour, butter, salt, icing sugar and lemon zest until crumbs form.
2. Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix for 1 minute until all the ingredients are combined and dough forms.
3. Cover the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.
4. Preheat oven to 180C (350F).  Wokring on a lightly floured surfcace, roll out dough to a thickness of about 1/8 in/3mm.  Using any cookie fo your choice, cut out rounds of the dough and transfer to abaking sheet lined with parchment paper, spacing 2 ins apart.
5. Bake for 22-25 minutes.  Transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.
6. Cookies can be stored for up to a week in an airtight container at room termperature.

I also tried the letterpress on some circles of fondant and iced over the letters.  As you see I had more success with HIM, but that was really down to not having cut the end of the piping bag properly as I piped HER first, then trimmed the piping bag and it worked better after that. Again, I think the ability to get the letters so even makes a much more professional finish. 

I made some other toppings for the cookies with some of icing that had been left over from the train cake.  I've had the Gerbera/Sunflower stamp for a while and not used it much, I see that it is also available on the Cake Decorating Store website, along with pretty much everything else you might need to ice and decorate cakes, cupcakes and cakepops.


Many thanks to Cake Decorating Store for the opportunity to review the Wilton Make a Message Letterpress, I was not paid for this review and all opinions are my own.

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5 Comments:

At 31 August 2013 at 20:40 , Blogger Baking Addict said...

I bought the Wilton message press set ages ago but have not gotten round to using it along with a lot of other cake decorating bits that I have in my cupboard!! I love your cookies and how you'e decorated them. Good to know that the letterpress works!

 
At 31 August 2013 at 20:51 , Blogger Angela M - Garden Tea Cakes and Me said...

What lovely biscuits Janice, and a great too for the icing too.

Angela

 
At 5 September 2013 at 16:39 , Blogger Chris Half said...

The icing looks good. I never have success with these things. Not that I do it much. Oh, maybe that's why. I would have done so in the original version of the cake I wrote last about.

 
At 7 September 2013 at 20:44 , Blogger Choclette said...

Your cakes and biscuits look so professional Janice. The writing really does add a touch of sophistication.

 
At 9 September 2013 at 13:39 , Blogger Unknown said...

I have a set of these now too, my "icing writing" skills are certainly not the best, I find them a really good guide, I ahve lower case too!
Cookies and cakes look great, still love the train cake!

 

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I love to read your comments and try to reply when I can. I have had to enable comment moderation due to high levels of spam, so it may take a little time before your comment is visible. Please let me know if you make one of my recipes or if you have any questions I will try to answer them. Janice

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