Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Labbits Like: Labbit Butt Sugar Cookies

Merry Christmas to all the Year of the Labbit blog readers! Today Ted brings you this easy recipe for sugar cookies and icing sugar. If you're gathered around with your family and all the presents are open and Christmas dinner has been consumed, how about making these sugar cookies? They don't have to be labbit butt shaped, you can use this recipe for any shape of cookie, and it's fun to make all different colors of icing to decorate cookies as you like. But for the labbit fan out there, here's a cookie for you. Print the recipe here.

Labbit Butt Sugar Cookies
Ingredients:
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
Egg whites of 2 eggs + yolk of 1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

For the icing: 
1 cup confectioners' sugar
2 tsp milk, more or less, depending on desired working texture
food coloring
Mini chocolate chips for the labbit buttholes
1/4 tsp vanilla extract, peppermint extract, rum extract or almond extract, depending on how you'd like it to taste. Note: using vanilla extract will cause your icing sugar to no longer be white. If you'd like white icing sugar, you may want to omit the vanilla extract or choose another flavor which is clear, such as peppermint or almond.

Preparation:
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Add flour, baking powder and salt and mix well. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least an hour to firm up.

Preheat oven to 400°F.  Prepare cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Remove dough from plastic and roll to a thickness of 1/4" between two pieces of wax paper.

Press a cookie cutter into the dough and place cookies on a cookie sheet about 1" apart. For labbit butt tails, take a small piece of dough, roll into a ball and flatten into a disk. Place on labbit butt. (Labbit butt cookie cutter tutorial here.)



Bake at 400°F for 7 - 9 minutes, or until the edges begin to brown. Remove from oven and allow to cook on a wire rack.

Prepare the icing! Some prefer their icing more runny to "paint" their cookies. Others like a firmer icing for use in a pastry bag. Keep this in mind when making your icing. For labbit butts there is very little detailing to be done so icing with a pastry bag is fine. In a small bowl, add milk to the confectioners' sugar and mix until smooth. Slowly add more milk for a thinner texture. Divide into separate bowls and add in flavor extracts and food coloring as desired. Mix well. Note: If you're dividing the batches of icing, don't forget to cut the amount of extract you're adding. Peppermint extract is especially strong.

Dip your cookies, paint your cookies with a brush, or fill pastry bags with an icing tip and ice your cookies. For labbit butt cookies, outline the cookie with icing. Place a mini chocolate chip under the tail and ice around the hole. Fill in the rest of the cookie with icing. For colored labbits with white tails, ice the tail, allow the icing to firm up for a few minutes, then outline the tail in a separate color. Place the chocolate chip, ice around it, outline the cookie, and fill in with icing.

Allow the icing to harden for a few hours before stacking on top of one another. Enjoy!

Yields: Two dozen labbit butt cookies (about 2.5" cookies)

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.