Eggless Fancy Lemon Cookies with Royal Icing - a guest post by Julie

Has anyone missed me? :-) As mentioned in my previous post, my family and I have been really busy over the past few weeks shifting to a new home. Though we are excited about the new place and not so much about all the unpacking  ;-) Lol! ,  I haven’t had a lot of time to update this little space of mine but I did promise to keep it updated with the help from my dear blogger friends.

And so here's a lovely guest post from a dear friend, Julie who owns a lovely and homely blog Erivum Puliyum which just turned 2 on March 28th,2013 – Congratulations dear!! She shares a lot of traditional yet simple Keralite dishes and also a lot of cakes, bakes and other cuisines.  I wouldn’t do justice to her blog by just naming out a few dishes that I like, coz I really love everything she shares and I do encourage you to take a look at her beautiful blog.

Julie has been one of my very first blogger friends who has been very consistent in encouraging me and supporting me and my blog and I truly love her for that. She is the first blogger friend with whom I had a chat over Gtalk and whom I added to my facebook friends list, so you know now how much I care about her. She is a lovely mom to two little boys and I truly enjoy her passion to blogging .  

She had tried out my Marshmallow Fondant recipe and did a gorgeous job of decorating her hubby's B'day cake and she was so nice to mention me in her post  :-) Now over to her pretty post for you all. 

When Manju invited me for a guest post to her space, I was very much thrilled and excited to do the part as she is one of my good old friends from blogosphere and am thankful to God to have made such wonderful friends around me. Manju is familiar to many in facebook and through her beautiful space with some mind blowing collection of cakes, frostings and fondant art. She hails from God's own country, Kerala and has a soft corner to the Kerala delicacies as well.

Some of her recipes which I love the most are her Baby Crib Cake, Red Velvet Cupcakes for Graduation, Fish biriyani, Swiss roll icecream cake & so on. I have always admired her devotion to blogging as she is working and is a mom to a naughty little fellow.

So, my guest post  for the lovely lady with a beautiful space are these Eggless Lemon Cookies with Royal Icing. I wished to post something unique, perfect for spring & for her beautiful space and selected these cookies. I’m happy that I tried it and in a way I could learn all about lemon cookies and royal icing too. These lemon cookies have a  true buttery lemony flavor. The royal icing adds to the tangy flavors. My kids just loved the colors and munched . 
The recipe for the cookies is adapted from here but the original recipe was with eggs, I modified it as eggless. You can enjoy the cookies without the royal icing too. This is a beautiful cookie which you can play with in different shapes and patterns with royal icing. 

Eggless Fancy Lemon Cookies with Royal Icing

Ingredients

For cookies

all purpose flour - 1 cup

butter  - 1/2 stick (113g);unsalted

sugar  - 1/2 cup

zest of quarter of lemon

lemon juice - 1tsp

baking soda -  a pinch

salt - 1/8 tsp

For Royal Icing

egg white - 1

lemon juice  - 1tsp

confectioners sugar/icing sugar -  1 1/2 cups

food coloring gel red,yellow,& green

Method

FOR COOKIES

Cream the softened butter and sugar on low speed for over a minute and scrape down the sides.Add in the lomn zest and lemon juice.

Sift the flour,baking soda and salt together in another bowl.

Add the flour in the wet ingredients and mix well,knead to form a dough.

Form it in a flat shape and cover with a cling wrap,refrigerate for about 1hour.Remove from refrigerator and lightly dust the counter and place the disc and start rolling until you reach 1/4"thickness.Now,take a cookie cutter and cut out rounds and semi circles of 2" diameter and place these on a tray lined with parchment paper with a 1" gap in between each cookie..Re roll scarps and repeat until you finish.

Cover & refrigerate again the shaped rounds for 1 hour so that It holds shape and doesn't spread while baking.

Pre heat oven to 375 degrees F  and bake for 8-12 minutes.(I finished in 10 minutes)

Cool on wire rack and store in air tight containers or go ahead and apply the royal icing once cooled.

 

FOR ROYAL ICING

Beat the egg white and lemon juice lightly.

Add in the confectioners sugar in small amounts and beat on low speed until you get the desired consistency.

Cover immediately with a cling wrap until further use otherwise it may dry up soon.

FOR ASSEMBLING

Once the cookies have cooled down , arrange them on a flat surface.

Mix the colors as required. (Red + Yellow = Orange, Green + Yellow = Light Green)

Then pour the royal icing in separate piping bags with small round tip( #3 & #6) or ziploc bag. Keep one bag as white color and one with yellow too. Close the opening of ziploc bag or with airtight rubber band close the piping bag as it tends to dry faster.

Now, if you are using ziploc bags , make a small cut at the corner/tip of the bag and follow these steps-

Outlining - Start piping a round using the smallest tip(#3)

Flooding - Fill in the center with same icing right away to help each other to melt in or give 10 minutes so that the outline is distinct from the inner.(I did immediately)

Shaking - Shake gently to smooth the icing without breaking the cookies on a flat surface and quicky as it tends to dry faster.

Wet on wet technique - Now start piping the second layer white using a #6 round tip or the smaller tip if you like it small, close to the perimeter and a center dot.

Marbling - Drag a tooth pick from the outer to the inner dot at 12 o'clock,3 o’clock, 6 o’clock & 9 o’clock positions and thereafter in the middle of these.

Shaking - Shake the cookies again to smooth over any left out gaps of toothpick, work very quickly.

Leave out to dry for 12-24 hours (Mine dried in 12hours) 

NOTES

* Add an egg instead of baking soda in the cookies if you wish to follow the original recipe.

* Adding confectioner’s sugar depends on the consistency or royal icing. If you wish a flooding consistency then stop earlier than 1 1/2 cups icing sugar.

 Thank you so much Julie dear for such a colorful post and I hope you all enjoyed eyeing these cookies as much as I did...Now time to go and start making them with her easy and simple techniques :-)

Stay tuned for more guest posts from some talented bloggers and I will try my best to update the blog as often as possbile. Take care all!

-Manju