Fairy Wand Cookies

It's been a while since I've done a cookie post so here are some fairy wand cookies I made a while back for a girly afternoon tea birthday celebration. The cookies are just my usual plain sugar cookies glazed with royal icing and sprinkled with tinted caster sugar.

Getting the cookies onto the lollipop stick was the hardest part. I hunted around for some non-plastic lollipop sticks and ended up buying these paper Wilton lollipop sticks from a cake decorating store, though I also saw them later in an arts and crafts shop. I inserted the lollipop stick into the cookies before baking (I realised just now that it actually says "not for oven use" on the website but too late... I had them in the oven for about 10 minutes and they were fine). I found that I had to roll the cookies out a little thicker than usual to make sure that the stick was fully covered by the cookie dough. The lollipop stick also made some of the cookies go a bit out of shape or caused them to crack so a little patching up and reshaping was required.

I wanted to make the cookies have a little bit of glitter on them like a real fairy wand, so I made some pink tinted caster sugar and dusted the still-wet icing with it. In hindsight, I think it would have been better to press the wet icing into a plate of tinted sugar for a more even colour over the whole cookie. We wrapped them up in some clear cellophane and attached a pink ribbon around the stick, and the guests took them home as cute and edible party favours!

Fairy Wand Cookies

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

Royal icing glaze
1 egg white
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
Water to thin out icing

Glitter decoration
caster sugar
food colouring of your choice

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 7mm thick and cut out stars using a cookie cutter and place on lined cookie sheets. Bake for about 10 minutes or 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. While the cookies are cooking, make the glitter decoration by putting some caster sugar into a zip lock bag. Add a small amount of food colouring depending on how vibrant you want the colour to be. Seal the bag and use your fingers to rub the caster sugar and food colouring together from the outside of the bag until the sugar is an even colour.

4. For royal icing glaze, beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually add icing sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. Mix in some water a few drops at a time to the white icing until the right glazing consistency is achieved - a blob of icing should disappear back into the mass after about 7 seconds. Use a palette knife to put some icing into the centre of the cookie and spread it to the edges of the cookie. Get rid of any excess by running the edge of your palette knife around the edge of the cookie.

5. While the icing is still wet, sprinkle some of the caster sugar decoration onto your cookie, or place the sugar into a sieve and dust it over. Alternatively, you can place the sugar onto a plate and press the iced side of the cookie down to stick the sugar onto the cookie. Allow to dry before packaging. If not using immediately, store in an airtight container.