Christmas Cookie House
- 140 grams Butter (or margarine)
- 1 Egg
- 80 grams Sugar (use beet sugar if possible)
- 1 Vanilla essence
- 280 grams Cake flour
- 1 to 2 tablespoons Cocoa powder
- 1/2 to 1 teaspoon Matcha
- 200 grams Powdered sugar
- 1 tsp Egg white
- 2 to 3 drops Lemon juice
- 1 Edible decorations (to taste)
- Cut out the house pattern out of thick paper.
- The design and size is up to you.
- The pattern on the top left is the chimney, which will be sliced at the folds when baking.
- Make the dough.
- Combine butter and sugar in a bowl, and mix well until it turns pale.
- Add the egg little by little, and add vanilla essence.
- Add cake flour and fold in with a rubber spatula.
- Divide the dough into portions for the white, brown, and green approximately in the proportion as the photo.
- The brown is with cocoa powder and the green is with matcha (I used powdered green tea this time) and knead until the colors are well-incorporated.
- When they are both evenly mixed, wrap each dough and refrigerate for an hour.
- Sandwich the dough between 2 sheets of plastic wrap and roll out to 5 mm thick.
- Take the top sheet of plastic off.
- Lay the pattern on top and cut out using a small knife.
- The color of the dough is up to you.
- Since I like the powdered sugar added to look like snow to stand out, I use brown dough for the ground and roof, the white dough for the walls, and the green dough for the tree and wreath.
- With the pattern paper still attached (on the bottom) to the dough pieces, bake in a 160 C oven for 25 minutes.
- Take off the pattern paper and cool the pieces on a rack.
- Make the decorative parts such as the fence, tree, wreath, animals and so on.
- Cut out any leftover dough with regular cookie cutters.
- The photo shows all the leftover dough this time.)
- Since the cookies will be covered with sugar, the dough is not that sweet.
- Add just a little egg white to the powdered sugar, and mix until it's a bit stiffer than toothpaste.
- Add lemon juice and mix well again.
- Put the icing in a plastic bag turned inside out (this way, the seams won't get in the way) and cut a small bit off one corner in lieu of using a piping tip.
- You can color the icing if you like.
- Draw on the roof or a pattern on the walls with icing, and let dry.
- When it's dry to the touch, assemble the walls roof chimney base decorative elements in that order.
- Each assembly step takes about 15 minutes each for the icing to dry.
- Done.
- Put powdered sugar in a tea strainer and shake it to look like snow.
- This is the side.
- This is the back garden.
butter, egg, sugar, vanilla, flour, cocoa, matcha, powdered sugar, egg, lemon juice, decorations
Taken from cookpad.com/us/recipes/154440-christmas-cookie-house (may not work)