Thursday, July 29, 2010

Decorated Shortbread


I have to confess that these are cookies I made some time ago (actually before Harry was born!) and never blogged about. They are some very simple biscuits made to look quite lovely (I think!) with a bit of easy decorating. These are the perfect cookie to give as a gift and they can be adapted to any situation.

The cookies are quite simply shortbread biscuits, cut into rounds, dipped in white chocolate and a royal icing flower popped on top. If I remember rightly, these particular shortbread had chopped pistachios through them (just add chopped pistachios to your favourite shortbread recipe). I used white chocolate to ice them (in fact white chocolate melts) as they leave a nice clean finish plus chocolate melts set really quickly and don’t even often dent like icing does, if you are packaging them up to send them. I did make the icing flowers which not everyone can do, but you can buy icing flowers from the supermarket now, or you can use other things to decorate – pebbles or smarties, other cake decorating embellishments, jaffas or other lollies, even just sprinkled with hundreds and thousands, these cookies would look great.

You could also colour the white chocolate. You have to be careful using other liquid with chocolate as it can seize, but I have had success with adding a little gel colour to white chocolate. Dipping the cookies is easy too – just dip them! You can use a palette knife to spread the chocolate on, but dipping works really well. I would love to know what other ideas you come up with.

2 comments:

Cakelaw said...

These are so pretty! I love your sugar flowers - they are too cute.

Rosa said...

Powdered colour works well for chocolate - I haven't tried gel but will have to try that as I have tons of colours of gel. :-) They look like lovely gifts!