Christmas Cookies (basic & TMX)

I wanted to bake some cookies today to try to get a photo for our christmas cards done. Ryan also had his friend I coming over, along with I's mum & sister. so I decided to combine the two and let the kids decorate some cookies. (i decorated the ones for the photo shoot though lol)

I used this recipe, which had pretty good feedback.

by the way, i've decided to post all recipes on my blog, even though i'll link to the original. someone else reminded me that when i was cleaning out my links a few weeks ago i lost a LOT of them as the sites were no longer there. safer to keep them here, but will always give credit to where they came from, when that is still possible!

Basic Biscuit Dough

Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 15 minutes
Makes: 40 (we got about 25-30 larger cookies)

Ingredients:
* 250g butter, softened
* 1/2 cup icing sugar
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1 egg, at room temperature
* 2 1/2 cups plain flour
* 1/2 cup cornflour

Method:
1. Using an electric hand mixer, beat butter, sugar and vanilla until pale and creamy. Add egg. Beat until well combined.
2. Sift flour and cornflour over butter mixture. Mix well. Divide in half. Press each half into a disc. Wrap each disc in baking paper. Refrigerate for 20 minutes.
3. Preheat oven to 160°C. Line 2 baking trays with baking paper. Roll each disc out between 2 sheets of baking paper to 3mm-thick.
4. Using letter-shaped biscuit cutters, cut letters out of dough. Place onto trays. Roll leftover dough together and repeat. Refrigerate biscuits until firm. Bake for 15 minutes or until light golden. Stand on trays for 5 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Notes & tips

* Hint: Dip cookie cutters into flour in between cutting each biscuit to prevent dough from sticking.


and the Thermomix version
Ingredients:
* 250g butter, softened
* 65g icing sugar (or make your own as per the instructions in the tmx book)
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1 egg, at room temperature
* 440g plain flour
* 75g cornflour

Method:
1. mix butter, sugar and vanilla until pale and creamy. speed 4, 40-60 seconds. you might need to scrape down the bowl half way through.

2. Add egg and mix on speed 5 for 5 seconds.

3. Add flour and cornflour to butter mixture. Mix for approximately 60 seconds on the knead setting .

4. Divide in half. Press each half into a disc. Wrap each disc in baking paper. Refrigerate for 20 minutes.

5. Preheat oven to 160°C. Line 2 baking trays with baking paper. Roll each disc out between 2 sheets of baking paper to 3mm-thick.

6. Using biscuit cutters, cut dough. Place onto trays. Roll leftover dough together and repeat. Bake for 15 minutes or until light golden. Stand on trays for 5 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

7. decorate with icing (approximately 1 cup sifted icing sugar, 1 tspn butter or marg and a tiny bit of hot water, plus drops of food colouring until you get the colour you want) and desired decorations - we used sprinkles / 100's & 1000's, some little candy hearts and silver cachous