Iced Sugar Cookies

Here's my initial plan: Bake a batch of cookies, glaze it with glaze icing, bring it to UKM for the meeting, and share it with my friends.

What really happened: I baked a batch of cookies the night before, glazed it this morning but took longer than expected, glaze was too runny as I added too much water, did a handful so I could at least have something to share with my friends, made my way to UKM, got lost on the NPE, ended up in Kuchai Lama, drove a little more and reached Bukit Jalil and finally arrived somewhere familiar - Bandar Kinrara, called friend for help, restarted my journey at the NPE, finally on the right track and reached UKM, wondered in the law fac for a good 10minutes before I realised they were in the lecture hall.

Cookies were alright but I know better on how to handle the glaze icing in future! Dont be so generous with the water!!!

Anyway here is the recipe:

Cookie dough

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar *can be reduced to 1/2 cup!

1 egg

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

3 cup flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in egg and extract and mix.

2. In another bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt.

3. Slowly add flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix until completely combined.

4. When dough is made, chill for an hour or so. After that, sprinkle flour out and roll and shape dough. But what I did was, (advice given by Our Best Bites) roll out the dough into a sheet and then, only freeze it for like 10minutes. Then quickly cut out the desired shape and place the shaped cookie dough onto the baking tray.

5. Bake at 177C for 8-12 minutes. If you like it soft and chewy, bake it for about 8minutes. If you like it crunchy, bake it longer.

and ta-daaa... you have this. Refer picture below.

Glaze icing

1 1/4 cup icing sugar

3 tbsp milk

3 tbsp honey

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Combine sugar and milk until smooth and not lumpy. Then stir in honey and vanilla.

Note: This was relatively easy but I messed things up by underestimating the power of milk/liquid. Because the sugar looked very much solid initially when i added the milk, i began to add in more and MORE water, without considering the recipe. That is probably where I went wrong because the icing became quite watery and I ended up adding alot more icing sugar to make up for the liquid. So peeps, if you ever make this, remember to only add any liquids bit by bit!

And you may also add any colouring to your liking. I tried yellow and red. Actually had plans to decorate them according to Valentine's theme but because my icing was runny, I had to do with a simple flower pattern. Do check out the way Our Best Bites decorated their cookies. This was what I originally intended to do. I forgot about the toothpick!!!! Could have decorated the icing using a toothpick. Nvm nvm, next time! I will definitely do this right! on a separate note, it is really therapeutic.

AIC2012 begins tomorrow! Looking forward to meeting lots of new people. Hopefully things will turn out smoothly.