Orange Christmas Sugar Cookies - Fawns and Snowflakes
Delicious decorated Christmas sugar cookie recipe. These Orange sugar cookies made into fawn, tree-shaped and snowflake cookies would work perfectly as a Christmas gift or for a Christmas themed party/ afternoon tea.
Preheat the oven to 180ºC degrees and line 2-3 medium/large baking trays with baking paper.
In a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy, then add the egg and extract * till incorporated. **
Meanwhile, sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl and mix till combined.
Once the butter mixture is ready then begin to add the dry ingredients flour mix, one cup at a time till thick and crumbly then knead lightly for a minute with well-floured hands. Be careful not to overmix the dough as this can lead to tough cookies.
To roll the cookies out my favourite method is to lay a piece of baking paper onto my surface, place the dough on top and cover with another piece of paper (although not always necessary) and roll out until about 1/4 inch in thickness.***
Chill the dough in the freezer for ten minutes. This isn't 100% necessary as we will be chilling it after cutting the cookies anyway. However, I feel like it makes the cookies easier to cut out.
To cut the cookies dip the cutters lightly into flour then cut out the various shapes. Flour the surface, if needed, however, be aware that too much flour will affect the dough consistency. I like to try and cut out as many cookies as I can with the first sheet of rolled dough then re-roll the scraps once more, to make the most out of the dough. ****
Place the cookies back in the freezer for 10 minutes before baking. This will stop the cookies from spreading in the oven.
Bake in the oven on a baking sheet with parchment paper, until very lightly browned. This should take around 8-10 minutes and then leave them to cool completely on wire racks.
For the Royal Icing
Beat the egg whites till light and foamy and then gradually add in the lemon juice and sifted icing sugar until you have a soft and creamy white icing.
Divide between three bowls and add a couple of drops of pink, green and an orange/brown to each dish. I like to start by adding a couple of drops and building from there, so my colours don't get too vibrant. I chose pink and green for my snowflakes, however, feel free to swap these out with other colours. *****
Place each colour of icing into a piping bag, twisted at the top, with a narrow nozzle - ready to pipe. If you don't have any icing nozzles available, don't worry - you can also use the piping bag and cut a tiny hole at the bottom of the bag. I find that nozzles give me cleaner lines though and more control of the patterns.
To decorate the cookies
To decorate the snowflakecookies:For the snowflake cookies, I simply piped out the shape that I wanted without any 'border', then left to dry
For the Bambi fawn cookies, I first used an edible pen to mark out a few areas. This isn't necessary but definitely helps create cleaner iced lines when piping.I used brown and white for the body and melted dark chocolate for the tiny details, like the eyes and nose. You can see my video to watch the exact method: Bambi cookies - orange Christmas sugar cookies.I wasn't too precious with these. However, if you want perfectly even icing, use a toothpick to even out areas that the icing has pooled weirdly. You can also use it for popping any bubbles in the icing.Leave the Christmas sugar cookies to dry completely and then transfer to an airtight container. Store these in a cool, dry place for 3-5 days.
Notes
* For extra orange flavour, you can use the orange zest of half an orange in the recipe.** You can also mix this batter by hand. However, I'd then suggest using room temperature butter ( see my tips in blog post above). *** For perfectly even dough thickness you can use rolling pic 'spacers' that fit onto your rolling pin and make sure the dough is perfectly even.**** Try not to re-roll the dough out more than twice as this can lead to spreading cookies in the oven and textural issues.***** Some people like to create a 'border' icing which is thicker and then add more liquid to create a 'flooder' icing. However, I didn't find this necessary for these cookies so kept to the one mix of medium consistency.