6 March 2010

Placecard Cookies

As I mentioned in my previous post about Après restaurant, I made sure that I sat next to people who would be willing to share their food with me so I could try all the dishes on the menu. In order to do this, I had to make place cards.


Since I wasn't having a cake, I also wanted people to have a little something to take home so I decided to kill two birds with one stone by making placecard cookies.


These cookies were just basic sugar cookies glazed with purple royal icing and white royal icing used to pipe on the names. It was my first time piping out letters and I was really worried that they would turn out a big mess but thanks to Queen Chu who let me borrow her piping set, and a bit of patience on my part, they turned out beautifully.

Photo courtesy of BLT

I wrapped them up in some plastic gift bags, tied some purple ribbon around the top and placed them on the table setting when we arrived at the restaurant. Everyone loved the cookies which were crumbly and buttery, with BLT and Captain Awesome polishing off their cookies before dinner had even begun!


Placecard Cookies

Basic Sugar Cookies
180g butter, softened
1 cup caster sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups plain flour

Royal Icing
2 egg whites
3 cups icing sugar

1. Cream butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy and pale in colour. Add egg yolk and beat well. Add whole egg and vanilla extract and beat until well-combined. Add flour all at once and beat on low speed until just combined - do not overmix. Divide dough in half and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for an hour or up to 2 days.

2. Preheat oven to 190ºC. Line cookie sheets with parchment. On a floured work surface, and using a floured rolling pin, roll out the dough until about 5mm thick and cut out shapes using a cookie cutter and place on lined cookie sheets. Bake for about 10 minutes (longer for large cookies) until dry on the surface and light golden brown on the edges. Remove cookies to a cooling rack and leave to cool before icing.


3. For royal icing, beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually add icing sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. If you want coloured icing, add your colouring now and beat until the icing is a uniform colour. If you want to glaze your cookies, add water a few drops at a time until the right consistency is achieved. You want it to be runny but not so much so that it all slides off your cookie - a blob of icing should disappear back into the mass after about 7 seconds. If it's too runny, add some more icing sugar to thicken it up.

4. To glaze your cookies, grab a palette knife and dollop some icing into the centre of the cookie. Spread the icing all the way to the edges and get rid of any excess by running the edge of your palette knife around the edge of the cookie. The surface of the glaze should be smooth - if it has a "matte" look then you need to add more water to your icing.


P.S. Thanks Queen Chu and JC for lending me cookie cutters and piping stuff, and BLT for the photo!

20 comments:

  1. Now that's neat.

    Next thing to do is iconographs of each guest drawn in icing...

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  2. That's super cool. Edible placecards! I love the gorgeous purple shade too.

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  3. What a great idea. I must commend you on your neat piping too. It looks so professional! I helped make personalised cookies for a friend's bday and mine were nowhere near as neat!

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  4. dude nice idea! love the purple and man your piping skillz is pretty awesome for your first time!

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  5. Ooh pretty purple! Such a great idea and omg your piping writing is so friggin' NEAT!

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  6. Oohh so cute! Mmm everything is much better in edible form!

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  7. Your cookies are so neat! And incredibly cute.
    Fantastic work :D

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  8. Your guests would have loved your personalised cookies!

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  9. haha it was definitely a tasty pre-dinner snack!!!

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  10. These are so cute and such a great idea!

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  11. Oh so cute! And I wish I could pipe letters as neat as you! And they're purple, yay!

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  12. Sooo creative! You know what they would be good for? Wedding placecards - you should start a business!

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  13. Awww...too cute! And I'm amazed at how neat you pipe =D

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  14. What a great idea. I'm sure everybody loved them. I think I would be guilty of scoffing them down before dinner arrived :)

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  15. Wow you have one steady hand. I cant ice names like you did on these yummy cookies. I always tend to make mistake when icing. This is a great idea. I myself only sit with people that let me try their food ehehe.

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  16. Hi The Ninja - Why thank you, but I don't think my icing skills are up to scratch for iconographs! Not to mention my non-existent drawing skills...

    Hi missklicious - Hehe thanks!

    Hi Helen - Well it took a lot of practise on some baking paper before I actually started on the cookies themselves! I originally was going to write in cursive but it turned out that printing was a lot neater

    Hi chocolatesuze - Hehe thanks Suze! I think the piping skillz were partly due to the fact that I had a squeezy tube to pipe with as opposed to the usual piping bag

    Hi Karen - Of course it had to be purple :)

    Hi FFichiban - I completely agree! If it's edible, it's better by default =P

    Hi Kristy - Thank you so much!

    Hi SK - From what I gathered the cookies were very well received :)

    Hi BLT - Haha I'm so glad you liked them! Biggest compliment of all was you eating it before dinner had even started hehe

    Hi Betty - Thanks!

    Hi Stephcookie - I was practising my piping the night before (so I guess you could say this was my 2nd attempt at piping) and it was terrible! All the letters were smooshed together and you couldn't make out any name whatsoever. For some reason the following day everything went smoothly and the letters came out perfect!

    Hi Trissa - Thanks! Haha I'm not sure if I'd have the patience to do them for weddings, and I'm so slow as well! Took me nearly a whole day to make the 25 cookies I needed and to make 4x that amount for a wedding would probably take ma whole week!

    Hi mademoiselle délicieuse - Hehe thank you!

    Hi Mark - Hehe I was saving my stomach for dinner but in any other situation I probably would have scoffed them down too!

    Hi A cupcake or two - I actually did make a mistake on one of them but the purple icing was dry so luckily I was able to wipe off the white icing and start again! Strategic seating is something every food blogger is good at I think hehe

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  17. These are gorgeous! Where did you get the plastic gift bags from?

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  18. Hi Nerida - Thank you so much. I bought the plastic bags a while ago but I think it was just at the $2 shop, near where they sell party bags. They were actually a bit longer than pictured because I chopped the tops off of them.

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