Iced Sugar Cookies (Eggless)

For the third day of Blogging Marathon #25, the alphabet is I and I selected Iced cookies. Sugar glaze icing is a substitute for royal icing in decoration of cookies. This is very easy to prepare and there are lots and lots of designs to decorate a cookie. Though I started out with lots of enthusiasm, after some time my patience went out of the door. So I stopped decorating the cookies. As there are cones filled with icing, my daughter is showing her creativity. I will share the snaps of cookies when she finishes decorating. Until then we will see how to prepare these cookies and icing. The cookies were very crisp and absolutely delicious with the glaze on top. The glaze also gives a nice shine to the cookies and they dry very fast. So if you have another person to help you could finish the whole batch in one hour. For the given amount of flour and butter the recipe yields nearly 80 sugar cookies.

Recipe Source: Real Simple
Ingredients:
Butter-1 cup
Granulated Sugar-3/4 cup ( grind to fine powder)
All Purpose Flour/ Maida-2 1/2 cups
Baking Soda-1/4 tsp
Salt-1/4 tsp
Fresh Cream-1/4 cup
Vanilla Essence-1 tsp

Procedure:
1. Cream together butter and powdered sugar.
2. Add cream and beat until fluffy.
3. Add in vanilla essence.
4. In a separate bowl mix flour, salt and baking soda.
5. Add this mixture to butter mixture and mix until everything comes together to a soft dough.
6. Divide it into 4 equal portions, place each portion in a cling wrap, and refrigerate.
7. You can prepare this the day before and the cookies can be made the next day or any day with in the week.
8. Before making the cookie, remove the dough from fridge and let it become little soft.
9. If it is straight out of the fridge, then it will break while trying to roll it.
10. When the dough comes to slightly softer consistency, place it between two sheets of cling wrap and roll it into 1/8" thick disc.
11. Cut with a cookie cutter.
12. Gently remove the cookies from the wrap and place it on a lined baking tray.
13. Refrigerate until firm.
14. Preheat oven to 175C.
15. Bake the cookies for 5-10 minutes.
16. When the base starts browning, remove from oven and let it sit on counter for 5 minutes or until the cookies become firm.
17. Remove the cookies from the tray with a spatula and cool completely on a wire rack.

P.S: The dough consistency is very important while rolling it. If it has become soft, wrap it and place in refrigerator until firm before rolling it out.

Prepare dough and refrigerate wrapped up in cling film.

Roll the dough between two cling films.

Cut with a cookie cutter.

Place on a lined baking tray.

Bake until golden. Cool on wire rack.

Glaze Icing

Ingredients:
Confectioner's Sugar/ Icing Sugar-2 cups
Milk-4-5 tbs
Vanilla Essence-1 tsp
Liquid Food Colours

Procedure:
1. In a large bowl sieve the icing sugar.
2. Add vanilla essence and 2 tbs of milk.
3. Whisk until incorporated.
4. Add milk by tablespoons until you end up with a thick icing of dropping consistency.
5. Divide it into 4 equal portions.
6. Leave one as it is and for the other 3 bowls add different food colours.
7. Mix well. Pour the colours into disposable icing bags.
8. Decorate the cookies as per your creativity.

Mix icing sugar, essence and milk to make the icing.

Pour into disposable icing bags.

Draw the outline using the piping bag on the cookie.

Add little milk to the icing to make it thin. Drop little icing with the spoon and spread it out with the back of spoon. th eoutline avoids the dripping of the icing. This is the method to fill the whole cookie with a single colour.