Heart shaped for Valentine’s Day of course!
As you will know by now if you follow the blog, Reuben and I do quite a lot of baking together. I am a huge fan of baking with kids, it is a great way for them to learn so many things, from maths to cause and effect, even something as ‘abstract’ as physics.
Anyhoo, after a trip to our local Sea Life centre (which you can read about here) where we came away with some really cute cookie cutters, I decided we could do some baking and make some cookies for Daddy (and the rest of us of course!) to show him what we had done with our day.
I now have an additional little helper in the kitchen as he is now big enough to clamber into the learning tower.
Now, bare in mind that I had been up early with Toby, who is an early riser – usually about 5/6am, and had been on the go all day. From painting, to charging about in the play area of the sea life centre, I hadn’t stopped and when I picked up the recipe book to look for a simple cookie dough, I misread the instructions, leaving out the majority of butter, and what has now become known as ‘Toby’s favourite biscuits’ was born. My little Mr is obsessed with them and will eat them by the bucket load… in fact since our day out I have made these at least once every other day!
Here’s the recipe:
- 1/4 cup of butter (should have been 3/4 cup – oops!)
- 2 eggs
- 1 1/4 cup of caster sugar
- 1 tsp of vanilla essence
- zest of 1/2 lemon
- 2 1/2 cups of plain flour
Pre-heat the oven to GM 6/400F/200C.
Cream the butter and the sugar together, although don’t expect it to go the usual creamy pale fluff that it would usually go into, it won’t as there isn’t enough fat, but just blend the two together until the mixture is pale. Add the eggs, a tbsp of flour to stop the mixture splitting, vanilla essence and lemon zest and mix. Finally add the flour and mix it all in. This will create a soft dough that is quite sticky so you will need a really well floured surface and rolling pin. Roll the dough to about 1/2 thickness and use whatever cookie cutter your heart desires!
Hard at work rolling the dough!!
Bake the cookies until just golden, usually and 10 – 15 minutes.
We have recently made these heart ones (see photo) for a practice run for Valentine’s day… now if I could only get the boys to stop eating them long enough to decorate!!
Harriet x
