Blimey! It's been a long time since I've posted and a lot has changed! I mean last time, my friend Louise and I were out exploring London and now she's a hot shot abroad (literally Dubai is hot) and I am no longer in London.
I won't go into great depths but I wasn't enjoying myself with my old job and it got to me which is why I stopped writing. There are so many reasons why I wasn't happy but the main thing to take away is I am back, with a new laptop that's not broken and happy with no moans or tears for my other half.
Despite not being here. I've continued making stuff and taking photos so I'm here to share actually one of last Easter's recipes (and photos - tell no-one!) for Lemon and Thyme Sugar Cookies with a speckled egg finish. You can tell it's from last year because I was obsessed, and still am, with this cake from thecakeblog and used the speckled finish idea on my cookies.
Lemon and Thyme Sugar Cookies
150g plain flour
100g unsalted butter
50g caster sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
1 1/2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
Water and icing powder for icing (and any colours you want)
Cocoa powder
Lemon juice
Step 1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl till it looks creamy. Then add the zest and thyme leaves, and mix through before stirring in all the flour.
Step 2. Keep stirring the mix until it's all combined and starts to pull together into a ball. The turn out on to a lightly floured surface. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes then roll into a ball, cover in clingfilm and leave in the fridge for 30 mins (if you're a real cookie monster in urgent need of cookies miss this step).
Step 3. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Roll the dough out on the floured surface to 1 cm thick. Now I'm sure there are egg cutters out there but I drew a crude egg cutter on card, cut it out and traced round it to get my egg shapes before cutting them out with a knife, they weren't all perfect looking but a bit of shaping in the tray once cut out went a long way. Bake in the over for 15 mins till golden.
Step 4. Remove the cookies from the oven and leave to cool. While cooling, you can make the icing, first I made a stiff water icing so adding a little water to a good amount of icing powder plus a couple of drops of colouring (I used a little blue and green to get a duck egg blue). I never measure my icing just keep going till it's right. Then I used a piping bag to pip an outline of the egg a couple of mm's in from the cookie edge, this will help keep you're water icing from pouring over the sides. I then added a bit more water to the remaining icing and poured enough in to my iced egg outline to come up to the same height as the outline.
Step 5. Make sure this step is done once the icing is dry, otherwise you're in for blotchy cookies. Just like thecakeblog I mixed about a tablespoon of cocoa powder with a teaspoon of lemon juice so it had the texture of loose paint. I then took my usual egg wash brush and dipped the brush into the cocoa mix and flicked the end of the brush over the cookies to get a chocolate sprayed/speckled effect. I'd recommend practicing this step on paper because it allows you to figure out how much you need to flick it to get the speckled effect you want. Also this step is really messy so be prepared to clean up afterwards!!
I went a bit far and did nails to match. Also super messy but worth it!
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