Elk and Other Animal Cut out Cookies

Submitted by Lalaloula

"This is a lovely recipe for plain cut-out cookies. They have a yummy vanilla taste and the dough is super easy to work with. Cut out any shapes you like and decorate them with whatever strikes your fancy. Please note that a 30 min. cooling time is not include in prep time. Yield of cookies will vary according to the size of your cookie cutters. I got 7 large elks and about 15 small ones."

 

• Ready In: 20mins
• Ingredients: 9
• Yields: 25-40 cookies

ingredients

• 125 g butter, cut into pieces
• 250 g flour
• 1 tablespoon vanilla sugar (or use regular sugar and add some vanilla)
• 70 g sugar
• 1 egg (medium)

• Optional Decorations

• currants (for the eyes)
• colored sprinkles
• royal icing or coloured icing
• melted chocolate

directions

1. In a big bowl combine butter pieces, flour, vanilla sugar, sugar and egg. Knead into a smooth dough. Wrap dough into cling film and refrigerated for 30 minutes.
2. On a lightly floured surface roll out the dough quite thinly (about 3 mm thick).
3. Cut out elks or other shapes using a lightly floured cookie cutter and place on a paper-lined baking sheet. If you like attach a currant to each elk for eyes.
4. Bake in the pre-heated oven at 190°C/375°F for 8-12 minutes or until just slightly browned around the edges.
5. Allow to cool for 10 minutes on the cookie sheets and then transfer to a wire-rack to cool completely.
6. Now you can add any decorations you might like to add. I used some eggnog flavoured icing dipping the cookies into it and attaching a chocolate chip as an eye afterwards.
7. Let dry.

Reviews

[AZPARZYCH]

These cookies are a lot easier to make than the cutout cookies I make at Christmas! My DSs helped and chose airplanes, trains, firetrucks and big trucks for their shapes. Thy do not care for frosted cookies so overloaded them with sprinkles! I managed to sneak one on the pan with vert few sprinkles so I can taste the cookie itself. They are light and I like that they are crisp since we rolled them thin. Will make these again! Made for Everyday Holiday.

 

[Deantini]

These are perfect sugar cookies; enough flavour to be delicious and still let the icing shine. We use icing sugar mixed with a bit of milk and then we add fruit colours. We got 38 cookies in all kinds of shapes. The dough came together well after about 5 min of kneeding. I found it easier to work with 1/2 the dough at a time after removing the dough from the fridge.