Scrabble Cookies

Week 36, Bake 36.

This week I decided I would have a go at enhancing my icing skills especially as this week I have gone 'back to school' (even though it was a training week). So here is my scrabble cookies, I am quite chuffed them especially as I didn't have a square cutter.

Ingredients:

• 380g of plain flour
• 2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 225g of salted butter (soft)
• 200g of caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
• Icing sugar
• Black food colouring

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 170.
   
2. In a bowl sift the flour and mix with the baking powder.
3. Now in a separate bowl beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
4. Add in the vanilla essence and the beaten egg a little at a time. Keep beating until it is incorporated.
5. Beat in the flour mixture a little at a time, when it gets hard to beat bring the dough together with your hands.
6. Dust a surface with flour and roll out the dough, until it is about 1cm thick.
   
7. Dust your cutter with flour (I used a knife and cut out square with it).
   
8. Place the squares on baking parchment and pop in the freezer for 5 minutes to harden up.
   
9. Now cook for 8-10 minutes (or until the biscuits have just a little colour).
   
10. Leave on the baking tray for a few minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool.
11. Now make your 1st lot of icing. Mix a little water and icing sugar together until you get a tick icing which you can pipe. Once the cookies are cool, pipe a square on the top of the cookies.
    
12. Do this to all of them, now add some more water to the icing just enough so it gets loose and can fill a square. Use a toothpick to drag the icing round all sides of the square until it is full. Leave to dry for an hour.
    
13. Now make the black icing, I added the colouring and a very small amount of water to get the right consistency, it has to be thick enough to pipe with a nozzle.
    
14. Pipe the letters on with a bigger nozzle and then the numbers on with your smallest nozzle.