Tuesday 13 December 2011

Gold-Dust Star Cookies

Who doesn't love a bit of glitter and sparkle at Christmas? It would not be Christmas in my home without it and you can never have enough glitter! I bake these cookies every Christmas and they never fail to impress with family, friends and work colleagues alike. Apart from them being seriously yummy and moreish, they leave a lasting impression....you will find evidence in glitter form over the faces of those who have indulged, hahaha. These cookies never last long and will feature a few times over the festive season.


Gold-Dust Star Cookies

Ingredients
90g soft butter
100g caster sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon ground ginger (or vanilla extract)
200g plain flour, plus more for sprinkling
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon fine salt
Edible gold dust or glitter flakes

Preheat the oven to 180oC/gas mark 4 and line a baking sheet or two with baking parchment or Bake-O-Glide.

Cream the butter and sugar together until whipped soft and pale, then beat in the egg, followed by the ginger (or vanilla), flour, baking powder and salt and continue mixing until it all comes together to make a soft dough.

Form into 2 discs, wrap each one in clingfilm and let it rest in the fridge for 20-30 minutes.

Sprinkle a suitable surface with flour, place a disc of dough on it and sprinkle a little more flour on top. Then roll out to a thickness of about 5mm.

Cut into shapes, dipping the cutter into flour as you go, and place the biscuits a little apart on the lined baking sheet/s. Keep the scraps of the first disc, to mix with the scraps of the second and roll and cut, re-roll and cut, until you’ve used up the mixture. This is wonderfully pliable dough, which makes it an unstressful joy to work with.

Bake in the oven for 18-12 minutes: this depends on their shape, how many sheets are in the oven at the same time, and whether on the upper or lower shelf, though you can swap them around after 5 minutes. When they’re ready, expect them to be tinged a pronounced pale gold around the edges; they’ll be softish still in the middle, but will harden on cooling.

Take the sheets out of the oven, remove the cookies, with a flat, preferably flexible, spatula to a wire rack and leave to cool.

Using a small (unused) paintbrush or eyeshadow brush, dip in the edible gold dust or glitter flakes, and give each cookies its gilded coating.


8 comments:

Please Do Not Feed The Animals. said...

Love the sparkly cookies - lovely idea!

The Caked Crusader said...

Glitter makes everything awesome. These are lovely biscuits and a touch of glitter makes them sooooo festive.

Kelly-Jane said...

I love these too, I do mine as hearts for some reason! Happy Christmas when it comes Maria. xx

Jo said...

These look so cute and definitely very moreish! I bought some edible glitter last week and am excited about using it soon.

Mandy@Withmilkandflour said...

Thats weird, I made some star shaped cookies today too! The shimmery gold dust on your cookies look lovely and festive!

Nickki said...

I really love the glam look of these cookies Maria and they really do look so festive. Perfect for this time of year xx

Anna's kitchen table said...

Maria, they look so pretty!

Choclette said...

Well what a brilliant idea to use glitter - they look lovely. I made some star biscuits and ran out of time to ice them (although I was a bit dubious at my skills in that department anyway), but I could have used glitter. Wish I'd seen your post earlier.