Friendshipday Special - Vanilla Cookies

Wish all my readers and friends a very very Happy Friendship Day :)

Friendship day memories are the most sweetest among the treasured memories of school and college days.

I still remember, the day before friendship day would be a busy one for me. Shopping friendship bands for the dear ones, hand crafting special bands for the close buddies and cutting out simple satin ribbon bands for the not so favorite friends :P The pleasure and the smile from the friends for this gesture would be priceless. Though friendship is not something that has to be celebrated for just one day, it still matters, because we just need a day to express it all.

School life were the days when I used to feel so proud while returning home with wrist full of friendship bands :) Why not?!! I had such a huge list of friends who bothered to let me know how they feel about me :)

Now days have changed or say we have grown up a little that we just make calls to wish friends and try to meet up for a coffee. More polished and matured way of celebration isn't it?! :)

This year I wanted to celebrate it with you all too since your support has motivated me to blog so much :)

Fortunately my hits have crossed a big number 4,00,000 today and it would be apt to celebrate the day with pomp and joy with all my blog viewers :)

Here is my simple vanilla cookies dressed up like you and me holding hands :) Thank you so much for your support :) I dedicate this post to you all :)

Ingredients:

All purpose flour(maida) - 100 gms
Baking powder - 1/4 tsp
Cooking soda - 1/4 tsp
Unsalted Butter - 50 gms
Powdered sugar - 50 gms
Vanilla essence - 1 1/2 tsp
Salt - a pinch

Method:

Sieve all purpose flour, baking powder and cooking soda together and keep it aside.

Beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add in vanilla essence, salt and mix well.

Add the flour and soda mixture and mix with hands into a soft dough. Wrap it with cling film and refrigerate for half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Remove the dough from refrigerator. Sprinkle some All purpose flour on your working surface and roll out the dough into a 1/4 inch thick rectangle.

Use your cookie cutters to cut out shapes.

Place the cut out cookies on a baking tray and bake for 12-15 minutes. Watching closely so that they don’t get too brown. 13 minutes did it perfectly in my convection oven.

Let the cookies cool on wire rack for a while. Initially the cookies might feel a little soft and crumbly to touch but it will harden as it cools down.

Store in air tight containers.

Light, crumbly and melt in the mouth vanilla cookies is ready to eat :)

This quantity would make around 15-20 cookies depending on the size that you make.

For icing:

Ingredients:

Icing sugar
Water
Food colors

Method:

Take some icing sugar in a cup and just add few drops of water to it and mix well until it is smooth. It should be in flowing consistency which is thick enough to pipe. Divide this into portions and mix in food colors to it.

Fill them in plastic cones and pipe them on your cookies as you like. Allow this to dry for an hour on wire rack.

The icing would harden up and give a beautiful look to your cookies :)

Tips:

I dint have the ginger bread man cookie cutter to cut this out. But never mind, I simply drew the figure on a paper and cut it out cleanly. Kept it on the rolled dough and cut out the outline using a knife. It is definitely a little tedious, but worth in times of emergency :)

You can simply sprinkle some sugar on top of the cookies, press it a little and bake them to make sugar cookies.

Mix in some powdered food color to the granulated sugar and sprinkle to give it a colorful look.

You can pack individual cookies in plastic covers and gift them to your friends ;)

Written by: Nithya
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