Heart Cookies
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In addition to the following ingredients, you'll need a baking sheet and some aluminium foil.
Butter - 50 grams
Sugar - 50 grams
1/2 an egg, beaten
A dash of vanilla essence
Cake Flour - 130 grams
Baking Powder - 1/2 Teaspoon
Take the butter from the fridge and allow it to reach room temperature.
Flatten the butter in a bowl as best you can, then whisk it until fluffy.
Add half of the sugar and beat it into the butter, then add the other half and beat until creamy.
Add the egg a little bit at a time, mixing well.
Add the dash of vanilla essence.
Sift the flour into a bowl, then add it to the other ingredients.
Use a wooden spoon to mix everything together, and shape it into a dough.
Wrap the dough in clingfilm/plastic wrap, and put it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Use a rolling pin to flatten the dough to about 5mm thickness.
Use a cookie cutter to cut out heart-shaped pieces, and put them on a sheet of aluminium foil on a baking tray.
[My notes: Use your thumb or a finger or the bottom of a spoon to make an indent in each cookie for the jam.
Bake in an oven at 180 Celsius until the cookies are uniformly golden brown.
Remove from the tray and place them on a wire rack to allow them to cool.
Put a little bit of jam in the indent of each cookie. For maximum freshness, put them into a cookie tin, with each layer of cookies separated by greaseproof paper.
To help you keep the dough uniformly flat, put two wooden rulers on either side of it, and roll the rolling pin over them. The dough will end up at the same thickness of the rulers.
Half an egg is kinda hard to do, so I suggest doubling everything and making a double batch of cookies.]
Flower Cookies
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In addition to the following ingredients, you'll need a baking sheet and some aluminium foil. You'll also need a piping bag and an appropriate nozzle.
Butter - 60 grams
Sugar - 20 grams
Full-Fat Cream - 2 Tablespoons
A dash of vanilla essence
Cake Flour - 80 grams
Take the butter from the fridge and allow it to reach room temperature.
Flatten the butter in a bowl as best you can, then whisk it until fluffy.
Add half of the sugar and beat it into the butter, then add the other half and beat until creamy.
Add the two tablespoons of cream, and whisk it in.
Add the dash of vanilla essence.
Sift the flour into a bowl, then add it to the other ingredients.
Use a wooden spoon to mix everything together, and shape it into a dough.
Put the dough into a piping bag fitted with a nozzle that will pipe into flower shapes. Pipe them out onto a sheet of aluminium foil on a baking tray at roughly even intervals.
[My notes: Use your thumb or a finger or the bottom of a spoon to make an indent in each cookie for the jam. Measuring spoons are best here because they tend to be semi-spherical.
Bake in an oven at 180 Celsius until the cookies are uniformly golden brown.
Remove from the tray and place them on a wire rack to allow them to cool.
Put a little bit of jam in the indent of each cookie. For maximum freshness, put them into a cookie tin, with each layer of cookies separated by greaseproof paper.
Piping bags are quite hard to get hold of. You'll need to find somewhere special if you want to buy one... or chances are your grandmother has one.]
Battenburg Cookies (For some reason, they're called "Icebox Cookies" in Japan.)
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In addition to the following ingredients, you'll need a baking sheet and some aluminium foil.
Butter - 50 grams
Sugar - 50 grams
1/2 an egg, beaten
A dash of vanilla essence
Cake Flour - 100 grams
Baking Powder - 1/3 Teaspoon
Cocoa Powder - 2 Teaspoons
Take the butter from the fridge and allow it to reach room temperature.
Flatten the butter in a bowl as best you can, then whisk it until fluffy.
Add half of the sugar and beat it into the butter, then add the other half and beat until creamy.
Add the egg a little bit at a time, mixing well.
Add the dash of vanilla essence.
Sift the flour into a bowl, then add it to the other ingredients.
Use a wooden spoon to mix everything together, and shape it into a dough.
Divide the dough in half. Take one half of the dough out of the bowl, and add the cocoa powder to the other half, mixing it in with a wooden spoon.
Shape each half into a cuboid (or as close as you can get) and wrap each half separately in plastic wrap. Put them in the freezer until frozen.
Cut each block in half lengthways (so you end up with two long rectangular prisms, and not two smaller cuboids). [Note: Since they're frozen, you'll need a very large and/or sharp knife to do this!]
Put each half on a half of the other type; chocolate on plain and vice-versa, so you end up with two blocks that are half-and-half.
Wrap them separately in plastic wrap and put them in the freezer until frozen.
Cut them in half lengthways again (so you end up with long rectangular prisms that are half plain and half chocolate).
Here's the clever bit: For each block, turn one half over, then stick them back together to get a checkerboard effect!
Again, wrap them separately in plastic wrap (you can probably re-use the same stuff) and put them in the freezer until frozen.
Take out both blocks and cut them sideways into cookies five millimetres thick. Put them on a tray with aluminium foil.
[My notes: Bake in an oven at 180 Celsius until the cookies are uniformly golden brown (on the plain parts, anyway).
Remove from the tray and place them on a wire rack to allow them to cool.
Half an egg is kinda hard to do, so I suggest doubling everything and making a double batch of cookies.
Refer to the preview picture for how to make the checkerboard effect, if the description wasn't clear.]
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Note: I checked the transcripts a few times, but no mention is made of when to add the baking powder.
Baking powder is used as a raising agent, and can be left out if you use self-raising flour. Just add it to the flour after sifting.