Eggless Royal Icing for Eggless Sugar Cookies and Season's Greetings

Wishing all my readers a Very Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday Season. It's officially Christmas here at our place. Girls have decorated little X'mas tree, just big enough to place gifts underneath. Personalized hand made Stockings are hung with  no special directions for Santa this time, only a wish list. Gifts are bought for the kids & tucked away somewhere, where they won't explore anything.  R also bought gift for us, while doing shopping with me, though it seems Dad is already quite satisfied with cookies, every time he entered the kitchen he asked when can I eat these. R has also taped her wish list on the wall behind the Christmas tree for Santa. And just for records here's the glimpse of her list :

    - black retriever puppy on 3rd no.
    - horse on the 7th no. &
    - parrot on the 10th
(it did took around 5 yrs. for horse to reach on  #7 it use to be up at #1 few years back)

But Thank God what I already bought for her is on 1st no. on her list. As for little one Ms. S, I have to say she has good observation. Couple of days back I asked her "What do U want for Christmas dear" and she answered "I want my Birdays" means birthday cake. Today I asked her "What do U want for Christmas dear" & answer was "I need presents, like yellow & red, and U can have candy in there, I'm gonna open it & we gonna eat it we can share it with all friends" and when I said why U want presents answer was "I NEED Presents". And she added Santa is like my "Grandpa Santa", he gonna come & eat one cookie. Thanks to Clifford & Calliou.

As for me I baked 6 batches of Eggless Sugar Cookies Couple of days back for R's school party. I've already posted these Eggless Sugar cookies back in January but this time I decorated them with eggless Royal Icing. Recipe for the icing is again from Aparna's blog who has further adapted it from veglicious.

What I used :

• 1/2 cup Icing Sugar
• 1&1/2 tsp. cornstarch
• 1 tsp. lemon juice
• few drops of food coloring
• 2-3 tsp. milk(use soy/almond milk/water for vegan version)

What I did :

Mix together sugar & cornstarch. Add lemon juice & milk(one spoon at a time) & mix it until the mixture become smooth but thick paste.

Divide the icing into different bowls & add few color drops in each as per your requirement, Mix.

Keep it for about 5-7 minutes, so that if any air bubbles are there will come to top.

Adjust the consistency of icing by using few extra drops of liquid(water/milk) for thin version or little extra icing sugar for thick version.

Transfer the icing to piping bags as otherwise it will harden.(I got the icing ready in piping bags a night before).

Note : If U need some tips for icing cookies please visit this post on Aparna's blog or for detailed version check this one out.

R also tried her hands on cookie decoration, I would say really good for her age.

Note : Cookies without any decorations can be kept in an airtight container for few weeks. Other day I read it on some website that they can be freezed also for almost a year.

But when it comes to decorated cookies, keep them in the airtight container once they have dried completely.Will stay fresh for around 3-4 weeks on the shelf. Any Royal Icing decorations are not suggested to refrigerate.

Eggless Sugar Cookies for a Sweet New Year Start

Happy New Year everyone! Hope everybody had a sweet and cheerful start to the year 2011. Today I'm posting my our first bake of the year 2011. It was a joint project between me & DD and it seems with her touch cookies came out nice & perfect and almost one third were gone before the end of the day.

I don't bake cookies very often so other day when we decided to bake sugar cookies I could not find my recipe(I still have many recipes on piece of papers). So I googled for Egg less Sugar Cookies & I found Aparna's(My Diverse Kitchen) recipe who has further adapted from Slashfood and before I looked at the recipe, the picture of her cookies convinced me that I have to make these. She has decorated them so beautifully, that cookies look like a piece of art. I'm sure many of you must have seen those already at her blog but for those who haven't here's the link. I haven't decorated mine, didn't had that much of time, but they taste good as is and good thing is she substituted 2/3 rd of the all purpose flour with whole wheat flour in this recipe. Another best part is dough doesn't need to rest in the fridge for this recipe so it's Mix, Roll, Cut & Bake. Took us around 20 minutes in total(including baking time) we used half of the recipe & baked around 22 cookies pretty generous size. Out of 22 cookies 12 were baked in the cookie pan with x'mas shapes and these were little more thick than regular rolled ones.

Though I have not changed the recipe other than using whole wheat pastry flour instead of regular whole wheat flour but I'm still going to write down the recipe as I said I halved the recipe and to avoid doing calculations again next time I think it's better to write down.

What U need :

• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 7 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
• 2 & 1/2 tablespoon milk(see notes)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour(I used whole wheat pastry flour)
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

What U do :

1. Sift together all the dry ingredients : flours, baking powder & salt. Keep it aside.
2. Cream butter & sugar till smooth. Add milk & vanilla combine everything together. You can use mixer for this step. I use to do this with regular whisk but this time I used stand mixer.
3. Add dry ingredients to the wet in batches & mix with hands till everything comes together as a dough. If it's crumbly & not coming together add a tsp. of milk & knead it for few seconds only(see Notes).Make 2 balls out of it.
4. Roll the dough ball into 1/4 inch thick sheet, cut out the shapes U want. Place the cookies on ungreased cookie sheet. Pick rest of the dough which is left after cut outs again make a ball of it & roll it, cut out the cookies, continue till U have no more dough left.
5. Bake for 10-12 minutes in pre heated oven at 350 degree F.Mine were done in 11 minutes, next time may be I'll take cookie pan out of the oven 1 or 2 minutes early as the bottom side got little dark(no change in the taste--it was good) I guess because pan was dark color. But the cookies in the cookie sheet came out good in 11 minutes.
6. Let the pan/sheet get little cool, invert the cookies on to the rack. Once completely cool store in the air tight container preferably in the lock if U r planning to decorate them later, as the chances are you won't find them when you need them, they are that good.....if U don't believe me check out at Aparna's blog she also baked it again for decorating. We still have some left as DD choose to take them in her lunch box as dessert, school is opening back tomorrow and I'm very much sure that's gonna be part of her "Share your story/experience from the holidays" discussion.

Notes :

Liquid for this recipe, that is milk, is suggested 1 & 1/2 to 2 & 1/2 tablespoon, I used 2 & 1/2 tablespoon and dough came out together perfectly. Every time quantity of milk used can vary, so it's better to start with minimum liquid suggested & add little bit at a time as needed.

These cookies are off to Champa for her weekly bake-off & also to Suma who's hosting a giveaway of  "The Cake Bible" by Rose Levy Beranbaum for her first blog anniversary celebration.