With Easter just around a corner, I got into some kind of baking spree. Really, I have no idea why, especially taking in consideration that I am trying to convince myself to get back on a healthy diet, but I just feel the urge to bake. In previous post, I mentioned that I am going reward the carollers with cookies instead of store bought treats this year. I was originally considering baking the coconut and cocoa cookies again, however as I found them bit too hard to cut into the shapes, I decided to do something little bit different today.
Ingredients:
250g all purpose flour
110g confectioner's sugar
1 pack of vanilla sugar
70g almonds
1 egg
lemon juice (1/2 of a lemon)
First of all, chop your almonds - I strongly recommend using the food processor to do so. Trust me on this one please, I tried it with hand mixer because I was too lazy to take the food processor out of the box and I spent next half an hour cleaning all the little pieces of almonds from all over the kitchen.
For the dough itself, start my beating the butter and sugar on low speed in a mixing bowl. When everything is evenly combined, add an egg and keep beating all of that for a minute. Then add flour and chopped almonds into the mixture and incorporate it well by hand and work the dough until you are left with nice and smooth ball of dough.
Roll the dough and cut the desired shapes of cookies. I decided to go with the baby animals theme - kitten, puppy and baby rabbit. Once all the cookies are cut, bake them in the oven on 200°C for around 8-10 minuted - basically until they get slightly pinkish (not golden this time, golden means "get the cookies out of the oven NOW, idiot!").
As for the icing, I used the traditional lemon sugar icing that I use for most of the cookies I bake. You can read about it in my Gingerbread Cookies recipe. I just made the icing little bit more runny than usual and I painted it over the cookies with brush.
Aaaand you are all done and ready for the carollers to come! Unless you eat it all before they manage to come, of course. :)
