Snowflake Cookies
Get into the holiday spirit with these Christmas snowflake cookies. Perfect for holiday cookie exchanges, homemade gifts or a fabulous festive dessert table.
Equipment
- snowflake cookie cutter
- Baking trays
- parchment paper
- Thin wooden skewer
- Cling film
Ingredients
For the cookies
- ⅔ cup (145gms) granulated white sugar
- 2 sticks (1 cup/235gms) unsalted butter
- 1 large egg
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 2 cups (300gms) plain flour
- ¼ cup (40 gms) cornstarch
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon almond extract
- flour, for dusting the work surface
To decorate the cookies
- ½ teaspoon light corn syrup or glucose syrup *optional
- 1 teaspoon water
- 1 lb (450gms) ready fondant icing
- 1 tablespoon edible star sprinkles
- ¼ teaspoon edible glitter
Instructions
To make the cookies
- Line your baking trays with parchment paper. If you are not going to chill your dough, pre-heat your oven to 350°F (180°C/160°CFan forced).
- Sift together the flour, cornstarch, baking powder and salt and set aside.
- In a seperate bowl cream the butter and sugar together.
- Add the egg, vanilla extract and almond extract and mix well.
- Add the dry ingredients and gently mix in until combined. Do not overwork the dough.
- Turn the mix onto a floured surface and push the dough together. The dough will be reasonably wet to start with. If it's too sticky to work with you can wrap and chill the dough in the fridge for thirty minutes.
- Divide the dough into quarters. Flour your surface well and roll out one quarter of the dough until its approx ¼ inch thick. Use the snowflake cookie cutter to cut our your cookies, transfering them to your baking sheet as your go.
- Leave about ½ inch space between each cookie on the baking sheet. They will expand a little but not much. Continue untill all the cookies from your first roll are cut out. Gather the scraps of dough and set aside.
- Re-flour your work surface and repeat with the remaining quarters of dough.
- Gently push the pile of dough scraps together, then reflour your work surface, re roll and cut out. Repeat until all the dough is used up.
- If you run out of room on your baking tray, layer a piece of parchment a paper on top, then add more cut out cookies.
- Optional: chill the cut out cookies, trays and all, in the fridge for about one to two hours. This will make the crumb of your cookies finer.
- If you have stacked multiple layers of cut out cookies on parchement paper on each tray remove the top layers so only one layer of cookies remains on each tray. Bake for ten to twelve minutes, or untill cookies are just starting to colur around the edges.
- Remove from oven and allow to cook, then transfer to cooling racks to cool completely before decorating.
To decorate the cookies with fondant
- Add the glucose syrup with a splash of water to a small bowl and mix well. The glucose syrup is optional but will help the fondant and decorations stick to your cookies.
- Divide the fondant into quarters. Put a large piece of cling film down on a clean dry bench or chopping board. Put one piece of fondant down. Top with another piece of cling film.
- Use a rolling pin to carefully roll out the fondant until it's quite thin. Remove the top layer of glad wrap.
- Brush one of the cookies lightly with the glucose syrup mix. Use the same-sized snowflake cookie cutter to cut out a snowflake shape in the fondant.
- Pick up the cut-out shape and place it onto the brushed cookie. Start at one edge then smooth it into the rest of the cookie, lining up the snowflake points on the fondant and cookie as you go. Gently smooth down the fondant on the cookie.
- Use a small, fine skewer to create the pattern on top of the fondant. Line up the skewer across the cookie from point to point of the snowflake shape.
- Gently push down to create a line indent in the fondant. Repeat twice more, linking the lines through the point in the center of the cookie.
- Use a very small dot of glucose syrup in the center of the cookie to stick on a star sprinkle. Lightly sprinkle the cookie with edible glitter.
- Repeat the process with the remaining cookies.
To decorate the cookies with royal icing
- Make your royal icing and put it into a small piping bag or zip lock bag. Carefully pipe a straight line across the middle of the cookie from one snowflake point to the other. Repeat twice more, evenly spacing out the lines.
- Pipe two to three short straight feathered lines along each side of each arm. Pipe a small in each gape around the central point. Repeat for remaining cookies.
Nutrition
Calories: 91kcalCarbohydrates: 19gProtein: 2gFat: 0.4gSaturated Fat: 0.1gPolyunsaturated Fat: 0.1gMonounsaturated Fat: 0.1gTrans Fat: 0.003gCholesterol: 6mgSodium: 49mgPotassium: 20mgFiber: 0.4gSugar: 6gVitamin A: 11IUCalcium: 7mgIron: 1mg
Nutritional Disclaimer
Nutritional information is an estimate based on an online database. The nutritional content of ingredients may vary by brand. If you require accurate nutritional information, you should calculate this based on the specific brands and products you are using.
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