Danish Tea-Biscuits for a Baby Shower

This week I had another excuse to make sugar cookies as we were invited to an almost baby shower party. Almost as the due date is still 3 weeks ahead and the almost new parents wanted just a small get together before the baby comes. Anyway, it was a good excuse for me to surprise them.

I baked the sugar cookies on Friday and decorated them on Saturday.

My first intention was to bake the same sugar cookies as the Santa Clause cookies, but I changed my mind and made some vanilla cookies. They all tasted like those Danish tea-biscuits that they sell in red, round-shape metal boxes. As my husband is not fond of marzipan and almond flavour ( - I really do not understand why - ), he just loved these vanilla cookies. So here comes the recipe

DANISH TEA-BISCUITS

INGREDIENTS

200 g all-purpose flour

113 g butter (room temperature)

55 g sugar

1 packet of vanilla sugar

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ coffee spoon vanilla extract

Whisk butter, vanilla extract and sugar together. Mix flour, baking powder, vanilla sugar and salt in another bowl. Add the flour mixture to the butter bit by bit. Mix with your hand or wooden spoon thoroughly until the mixture is combined. If it seems that it's gone get combined, add max 1 teaspoon water to it.

The dough is very soft. Rolling it out was a bit of a challenge for me first. It cracks time to time during rolling, but push a bit on the sides and roll it further. Roll out until it is 4 cm (1,5 inch) thick.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees (390 Fahrenheit). Cut out the shapes you like and bake them for 5-6 minutes. Same applies as for the other sugar cookie recipe; the sides should not be brown.

DECORATION

INGREDIENTS

- royal icing (piping and flooding),

- Wilton #2,

- piping bag,

- brown, yellow, blue, pink and orange food colouring,

- toothpick.

DUCK

 

First, outline the duck with yellow and blue piping icing. When it is dry, flood the parts separately. Finish it with the details (eyes – small white dot and a green sugar pearl, beaks and wings).

BABY

 

First, outline the head including the ears with pink piping icing. I like more the ivory-brown combination for the skin I saw at SugarBelle, but I did not have ivory. :))). When the outline is dry, flood the whole cookie and finish it with the details (pacifier, eyes and hair).

BABY CLOTHES

 

First, outline the shirt with brown and blue piping icing. (I just realized that I took the photo at a wrong step. Of course, the lower side of the shirt was outlined before flooding.). When the outline is dry, flood the parts, which you want to sprinkle with sugar pearls. When it is dry, flood the other parts.

PUSHCHAIR

 

 


First, outline with brown piping icing the lower part of the pushchair. When the outline is dry, pipe a basket shape. It is the same technique as I used during decorating the Tulip Cake. Here is the template for easy reference (every colour is a new step).

On the upper part of the pushchair I wanted to try another technique. Apparently I should have used a flooding icing for the stripes instead of piping icing. Maybe next time.

BABY FEET

 


This was the fastest as only outlined the feet and flood them after 10-15 minutes waiting.