Cakes & biscuits
Butter cut-out cookies
These butter cookies have clear outlines and a delicate bite.
- Total time
- 80 min
- Servings / pieces
- 40
- Topic
- Cakes & biscuits
These butter cookies have clear outlines and a delicate bite. The simple shortcrust dough uses few ingredients but needs a proper chill, making stars, hearts and other shapes easier to handle. Keep shapes on the same tray similar in size so tiny points do not burn while thick cookies remain pale. Once cool, decorate some with lemon icing and others with chocolate or sprinkles. The yield of forty assumes medium cutters about five centimetres wide. Smaller cutters give more cookies and usually need a shorter baking time.
Method
Step by step
- 01
Make the dough
Quickly combine the flour, cubed butter, sugar, egg, vanilla and salt. Stop as soon as no dry flour remains. Shape into two flat discs, wrap and refrigerate for at least 40 minutes.
- 02
Roll evenly
Heat the oven to 180°C conventional. Roll one disc to a thickness of 4 mm between baking paper or on a lightly floured surface. Leave the second disc chilled. Excess dusting flour makes rerolled scraps dry.
- 03
Cut the shapes
Cut cookies close together and transfer to a lined tray with small gaps between them. Chill any softened shapes for ten minutes before baking. Gently press scraps together once, chill again and reroll.
- 04
Bake lightly
Bake one tray at a time on the middle shelf for 9–12 minutes. Remove when the edges are pale gold; the centres can remain light. Leave on the tray for two minutes to firm, then carefully transfer to a rack.
- 05
Decorate
Mix the icing sugar with one tablespoon of lemon juice, adding more drops until thick but spreadable. Ice completely cold cookies. If using chocolate, melt it gently and dip selected cookies. Add sprinkles while the coating is wet and let everything dry fully.
Times are a guide. Your hob, oven and ingredients affect the result; use the cooking cues as well as the clock.
Keeping sharp edges
Very soft dough spreads more in the oven. Chilling already cut shapes helps more than adding extra flour. Let a hot tray cool before loading it with the next batch of dough.
Controlling the icing
Keep icing thick for fine patterns; make it slightly looser for an all-over coating. Add lemon juice a few drops at a time. Thin icing runs over the edges and takes longer to dry.
Kitchen questions
One more question?
Can I prepare the dough ahead?
Yes. Wrap airtight and refrigerate for a day. Let it soften only briefly before rolling.
How do I preserve the texture?
Once the decoration is dry, store in a tightly closed tin. Keep moist cakes and damp decorations elsewhere because their moisture changes the cookies.
.jpg){kind=link}
