3 Sieve the flour and dry ingredients in a bowl and add the melted ingredients. Mix well until the dough becomes firm.
4 Place the dough in a plastic bag and chill in the fridge for 40 minutes.
5 Continue as for the vanilla cookies. Bake for 10–15 minutes, depending on the size of your cookies.
ingredients…
why not try adding the zest and juice of a lemon for zingy lemon-flavoured cookies?
gingerbread
1 Preheat the oven to 170ºC/ 325ºF/ Gas Mark 3.
2 Place the butter, treacle and sugar into a saucepan and heat gently until the sugar has dissolved and the butter melted. Cool slightly.
3 Sieve the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl. Pour the melted mixture into the dry ingredients and stir.
4 Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the milk and add to the mixture. Combine to make a dough, adding more milk if necessary.
5 Place the dough in a plastic bag and chill in the fridge for 40 minutes.
6 Continue as for vanilla cookies then bake for 10–15 minutes, depending on the size of your cookies.
For gingerbread men, try adding currants for eyes before baking
ingredients…
covering cookies
There are a number of edible materials that you can use to cover your cookies, from the classic royal icing to the more contemporary sugarpaste.
sugarpaste (rolled fondant)
This is a sweet, thick, opaque paste that is soft, pliable, easily coloured and extremely versatile. It is simple and inexpensive to make, just follow the recipe below to create 1kg (2¼lb). I used sugarpaste to decorate a range of cookies featured in this book as it is easy to shape and emboss to create stunning effects, such as the Dressed Up cookies on p70.
ingredients…
1 Place the water in a small bowl, sprinkle over the gelatine and soak until spongy. Stand the bowl over a pan of hot (not boiling) water and stir until the gelatine is dissolved. Add the glucose and glycerine, stirring until well blended and runny.
2 Put the icing sugar in a large bowl. Make a well in the centre and slowly pour in the liquid ingredients, stirring constantly. Mix well.
Ready-made sugarpaste is widely available and comes in a spectrum of colours
3 Turn out on to a surface dusted with icing sugar and knead until smooth, sprinkling with extra icing sugar if the paste becomes too sticky. The paste can be used immediately or tightly wrapped and stored until required.
Store sugarpaste in thick plastic bags in an airtight container
edible gums
Small quantities of these can be kneaded into sugarpaste to make it firmer and more versatile for decorating cookies and can be useful for details such as the bows and tassels of The Graduate (p44). The gum allows the sugarpaste to be rolled out more thinly and the soft paste to be modelled more easily. As a guide, add 5ml (1 tsp) gum to 225g (8oz) sugarpaste, less for firmer paste and more for sticky soft paste. You can use either of the following:
gum tragacanth is a natural gum that is excellent if you have time. Ideally, the gum needs time to work before the paste is used. You will begin to feel a difference in the paste after an hour or so, but it is best left overnight.
cmc is a synthetic substitute but has the