ORANGE ZEST AND CARDAMOM SUGAR COOKIES
December is really my favorite time of the year! I love the holiday season, the cold and crisp air, beautiful lights everywhere, holiday cheer all around, there is generally a beautiful vibe in the atmosphere that is so cheerful!
December also marks the beginning of cookie season! Every year I love to bake different kinds of cookies. Baking makes me so happy and in my zone. It takes me to a zen place. I love putting on some good holiday music, get my apron on, and bake away on weeknights and weekends.
The first cookie that I wanted to showcase this season is my Orange Zest and Cardamom Sugar Cookies. They are really very simple to put together, you can simply keep them as Sugar Cookies, use cut outs to make them fun, OR you can beautify them by using royal icing and some creativity!
The ingredients of the cookie are really very basic:
- All purpose flour
- Unsalted butter at room temperature
- Granulated Sugar
- Baking powder
- Salt (always salt to balance out the sweetness)
- Freshly ground cardamom, again always freshly ground for the best aromas!
- Orange zest
- Good vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
- One egg
I LOVE the combination of Orange and Cardamom. One of the first jams I developed for Jam Lab, was an Orange and Cardamom Marmalade. It was truly wonderful, and really popular when I was selling my jams on Etsy. I used it to make a babka with a pistachio praline paste that is so good! I need to remake the recipe to ensure that the measurements are correct!
The cookie is really made by mixing the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients. Then wrapping in a plastic wrap and put it in the fridge to firm up slightly. Roll out the cookie dough, cut out shapes, put it in the fridge to firm up slightly so that they do not spread much in the oven, and then bake off in the oven until golden brown in color.
ROYAL ICING:
Next is the FUN part – ROYAL ICING! I used to be so intimidated by ALL Those beautiful cookies that I would see on the internet! I would think – how are people SO creative to be able to make such wonderful designs on the cookies? IS IT THAT HARD? So a few years ago, I decided to dive in and give Royal icing a try.
Royal Icing has 3 ingredients:
- Confectioner’s sugar
- Meringue powder (easily available at Amazon)
- Warm water
Wilton has a really good recipe for royal icing that I roughly followed and I have adapted it in my recipe here. I found the water to be slightly less in their recipe, so I have adapted it to add more water in the recipe here. Main thing is to watch out for the consistency of the royal icing. The best part is, that the icing consistency can be fixed by adding more water if stiff, or adding more confectioner’s sugar if too runny and simply mixing it with a rubber spatula.
I use the piping bags, bag ties as linked here for the royal icing. Royal icing requires the piping bags to be flexible. Wilton piping bags are a bit stiff, so they do not exactly work with royal icing.
My recipe has instructions on how to put the royal icing into the piping bag efficiently, and to use a bench scraper to scrape all the icing to the bottom of the piping bag.
You want the flooding of the cookie to be of medium consistency, and to make the 3D designs on top of the cookie, the icing needs to be stiffer. So separate out the icings into separate bowls, making sure that each bowl
has its own mini rubber spatula and then add the colors to each bowl and mix thoroughly.
Gauge the thickness and consistency of each of the colors, and add water or sugar depending upon how stiff/loose the icing is. If the 3D design icing is a bit loose, the icing will spread on your cookie and the 3D design will be lost. Gauging the consistency of the icing comes with practice.
My suggestion is to keep a simple design as your first practice cookie, keep it to 2-3 colors and practice. Once you get the hang of it, you can move onto more complicated designs.
I use Americolor gel colors for adding color to my royal icing. I also used ChefMaster edible pens for the slightly intricate designs on the cookies. I bought the americolor gel colors from www.bakedeco.com . They have a 15$ off on their website for orders over 99$, so you can get a discount on these colors for a 50 pack. Again you can start off with their 12 color basic set first, and as you use it more, you can upgrade at a later point.
As you get more practice, you will realize how fun royal icing cookies are, and how fun it is to pipe different designs. I love the Rifle Paper Co designs, and have used it often to make cakes.
I used it here to pipe the designs on the cookies. And then make a wreath shaped design with the cookies, giving it an illusion effect of a wallpaper of elegant cookies.
HOW LONG DO THEY LAST AND HOW TO SHIP THEM?
The best part about royal icing cookies is that they last for a long time, about 3 weeks, in an airtight container and they transport well too. You want to wrap them individually in plastic or parchment paper, and then put it in tins, if you want to ship them across the country. They make for excellent gifts for any holiday party. You can see the love and attention put into each cookie and they will surely be appreciated!
Hope this blog post helps with royal icing, and removes your fear of royal icing. I hope that I can do a tutorial or a video one day showing how to make the royal icing and pipe it on cookies. Now that would be fun! 🙂
Hope you all have a lovely time baking with your families, and enjoying the holiday cheer all around.
XO
Amisha
Orange Zest and Cardamom Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- Orange zest and cardamom sugar cookies:
- 3 cups (360 gms) all purpose flour
- ½ tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp freshly ground cardamom
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 ¼ cup (250 gms) granulated sugar
- 1 cup (2 sticks; 226 gms) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 tbsp orange zest
- 1 large egg
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- Extra flour for rolling
- 2 inch round cutter
- Royal Icing:
- 4 cups confectioner’s sugar
- 3 tbsp meringue powder
- 6 to 8 tbsp warm water
- Americolor gel colors
- 12 inch piping bags
- 6 mini rubber spatulas
- Chefmaster edible pens
Instructions
- Orange zest and Cardamom Sugar Cookies:
- In a medium bowl, add the flour, baking powder, cardamom and salt. Whisk to combine.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, with a paddle attachment, add the butter and granulated sugar. Start mixing at low speed, gradually increase the speed to high, and whisk the mixture for 2 minutes, until light and fluffy and pale yellow in color.
- Add the orange zest, egg and vanilla extract and whisk to combine. Use a rubber spatula to scrape the sides of the bowl to bring the mixture to the center.
- Now add the flour mixture, in 3 batches, into the butter mixture and start whisking at slow speed until combined.
- The mixture should look cohesive, else use the rubber spatula to combine.
- Use a plastic wrap, add the dough onto the wrap. Cover and seal properly. Flatten the dough into a round disc about 5 inches in diameter. Store in the fridge for atleast 2 hours to overnight. If left overnight, leave it out for 20 minutes for it to soften a bit, so it is easy to roll out the dough.
- Rolling and baking:
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Set 3 baking trays with parchment paper.
- On a clean work surface, sprinkle extra flour. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough into about ½ cm thickness.
- Dipping the 2 inch round cutter into extra flour, cut out circles, and place them on the baking tray. Place 12 to 15 cookies at a time on a tray. Bake in the middle rack of the oven for about 13 to 15 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown in color.
- While these cookies are baking, you can keep the other trays with the unbaked cut cookies into the fridge for it to stay cold, until they are ready to go into the oven.
- I bake one tray at a time for the best consistent results.
- Once one baking tray is done, let the cookies cool completely on the baking tray for about 20 minutes.
- Repeat for the other trays.
- Use the remaining cookie dough to roll, bake off other cookies(if any dough is remaining) and bake them off using the steps above.
- Royal Icing:
- In the bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, add the confectioner’s sugar, meringue powder, and 6 tbsp warm water to start off with. Start off slow so as not to splatter the sugar everywhere. As the mixer incorporates, increase the speed to medium speed, and whisk for about 7 to 8 minutes. Check for the consistency.
- If the mixture is too stiff then you can add 1 tsp water at a time, or if too runny, add about ¼ cup powdered sugar at a time.
- You want to go with a slightly stiffer icing because we will be piping on top of the cookie.
- Separate out the icing into smaller bowls, depending upon the amount you will use for each color. For these cookies I used 6 colors in all.
- I used more baby blue icing for flooding each cookie, so that bowl had more icing compared to the rest of the other bowls. The other bowls have about equal icing for the remaining colors.
- For flooding, I need a more medium consistency of icing, so I add 1 tsp of water a time, to thin it out ever so slightly.
- For the other icings, I want a slightly stiffer consistency so I can do the 3D designs on the cookie, once it is flooded with the baby blue royal icing. If the icing is too stiff, add 1 tsp of water and mix well to combine.
- Add the desired colors to all the bowls, and use a separate mini rubber spatula for each bowl to combine and get the desired consistency and color.
- Applying royal icing on the cookie:
- Add each color into a piping bag, by putting each piping bag in a tall glass, having a large overhang of the bag around the glass. Put each color of the icing into each piping bag. Using a bench scraper, gently scrape all the icing all the way to the bottom of the bag. Use rubber bands to seal the tops. Keep them aside until ready to use.
- Cut just a slight piece of the tip of the baby blue royal icing. About 1mm. With a steady hand, surround the rim of each cookie with the royal icing. Flood each cookie with the same color by piping all around inside the cookie in reducing concentric circles. Tap the cookie on the surface, and shake it alternatively to flood the cookie with the royal icing. You will see it smoothen out slowly. If it does not, use a toothpick to easen out the icing throughout the cookie until smooth.
- Repeat for all the cookies. Let it dry completely, about an hour.
- For piping the designs, you need a steady hand, and cut just a tiny tip of the piping bag, about 1mm. Using your creativity, pipe your designs on the cookie. I do one color at a time, on about 5-6 cookies, and then use the other colors to complete the cookie. This way I know where I am taking the cookie with the design.
- Use the Chefmaster edible pens to put the intricate designs onto the cookie.
- The cookies will stay fresh, in an airtight container for upto 3 weeks. These cookies are very easily shippable.
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