Giant Edible Embroidered Cookie
Vanilla Butter cookies-makes one giant cookie and 4-5 smaller cookies
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85 g/3ozs butter, softened
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140g/5ozs white caster superfine sugar
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1 egg
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1 teaspoon vanilla
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180g/6ozs all-purpose flour
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1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Royal icing
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200g/7ozs icing sugar
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1 egg white
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2 tablespoons lemon juice
To decorate
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Multicoloured sprinkles-I also used candied fennel seeds which I bought at an Indian grocery store
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Tweezers
Step 1 - In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in egg and vanilla. On the lowest speed add in the flour . Cover in cling film, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
Step 2 - With a sheet of A4 paper cut out a circle of about 18cms in diameter and make scalloped edges-I used the embroidery that my mother loaned me as a guide.
Step 3 - Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough between two sheets of baking parchment 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Place the paper stencil on top of the rolled out dough and using a small paring knife cut out the outline and remove the excess dough from around the outside. Re-roll the excess dough and cut out some smaller cookies using a scalloped cookie cutter (my smaller ones were 7cms in diameter). Bake the smaller ones in the oven for 5-8 minutes and the large cookie for 15-18 minutes until lightly golden around the edges. Allow to cool.
Step 4 - Have your sprinkles ready as once you fill the cookie with the white royal icing, you will need to place the sprinkled on straight away. Make the royal icing (this will make more royal icing than you need but it's hard to halve an egg). I make the royal icing very quickly in my cordless Braun mini blender. I place the unsifted icing sugar in the container and blitz this for about 20 seconds until the lumps are gone. Then I add the egg whites and lemon juice and then blitz it again until it is smooth.
I checked the consistency by drawing a line and if it holds well without blurring then it is ready. If it is too stiff add a few drops of water, if it is too soft, then add some more icing sugar to achieve the consistency. Then fill a small piping bag with the royal icing (I usually make a small cone using a square of parchment) and draw an outline around the scalloped edges of each of the cookies. Allow to set-I did this on a cold, dry Winter's day and it set within 10 minutes. In humid weather it will take longer.
Step 5 - Add a little warm water to the remainder of the royal icing (a few drops will do) and whiz the icing around to combine and smooth the texture-you will get a few air bubbles so have a skewer or toothpick ready to burst these. Using a spoon "flood" the inside of the outline reaching up to the edge. Don't use too much-you can see I was a little over eager and flooded the giant one a bit too much and it spilled over the edge in a couple of places-oops!
Step 6 - Now working quite quickly as you want to place the sprinkles while the icing is still wet so that they adhere to the icing. Using your tweezers carefully place the sprinkles individually. The larger cookie took about 45-60 minutes to decorate and the smaller ones about 5 minutes to decorate-the scalloped edge takes a long time too so don't start it unless you want to finish it (I wished I hadn't on the larger cookie!). Allow to set.