(whimsical classical flute music)
- Hey everybody, welcome to Smart Cookie!
I'm your host, Elise Mayfield, and it's time
for our Easter episode.
Today we are going to be making a cookie bouquet
that will be so beautiful for Easter.
We're gonna make little shortbread flower cookies
and then we're gonna put them in a little,
cute, little pot.
It's gonna be so cute.
We're gonna make a very basic shortbread recipe
to start off, so we are just gonna start with some
AP flour and a little bit of salt.
And the great thing about shortbread is that it is
a really simple recipe.
There's no leavening in this.
It's just gonna be flour, salt, and butter
is really all you need ...
And a little bit of sugar.
We are gonna start with some unsalted butter.
Would you like me to tell you a Smart Cookie
fact of the day?
Of course you would!
Smart Cookie Fact of the Day:
there was a gingerbread guild in Germany.
And they basically said that they were the only people
that could make gingerbread all year.
And the only time that ban was lifted
was during the holidays, and that's why there's this
tradition of making decorated gingerbread cookies
that happen during Christmas.
But apparently, you could be prosecuted and fined
if you made gingerbread outside of the time
that the ban was lifted.
Cookie jail, I guess.
So we got our butter, unsalted butter.
We're just gonna add some sugar.
We're gonna cream this butter and sugar together
for about four minutes.
We need for it to go that long
because we need this to cream together so it gets
kind of lighter in color and it gets super fluffy.
So we're gonna let this mixer go at medium speed
for about four minutes.
(mixer whirring)
♪ Favorite part of an Internet baking show ♪
♪ Is waiting around for things to bake ♪
Boom!
It's been four minutes.
I bet in Internet world, it's been like two seconds,
which is very cool.
So, now that we have creamed together our butter and sugar,
you can tell that this has gotten light and fluffy
and so yummy.
I'm gonna add some vanilla and scrape down
the side of my bowl a little bit.
And then we're just gonna slowly add
our flour and salt mixture to this
until a loose dough forms.
(mixer whirring)
You have to do this slowly, otherwise you're gonna have
like a flour explosion, which ...
Maybe you wanna deal with the cleanup on that,
but that is not a thing that I wanna do.
So now you can see, we've got a very loose, shaggy dough.
I know that this looks scary right now,
but trust me, there's enough butter in here
that it's gonna start to come together.
So we're just gonna kinda use the heat of our hands
to get it to come together.
(whimsical instrumental music)
We're gonna wrap these in cling wrap,
and then we're gonna let them chill
in the fridge for an hour.
We just need that time for the butter to come back
so that it's really cold.
That's gonna help us keep our dough together.
Now that we have our two little hockey pucks
of shortbread dough, we're just gonna
wrap these in plastic wrap,
and then we're gonna chill them in the fridge
for about an hour.
And then we'll come back and we'll roll 'em out.
(clicks tongue)
Our cookie dough has been chillin' out.
I've rolled it out a little bit already.
Ooh, while I'm rolling out, I can tell you a fact.
Smart Cookie Fact of the Day:
while we know Easter is traditionally a Christian holiday,
it's based on an old festival period
celebrating the springtime and the spring equinox.
And in the Anglo-Saxon community,
there was a goddess of spring and fertility
whose name was Eostre,
which it sounds very similar to Easter.
So she was often depicted carrying a woven basket,
which is where we get the Easter basket from.
She's also the reason that we have bunny rabbits
and eggs as part of our tradition,
because there is a story that Eostre,
she went to rescue a dying bird
who was freezing in the cold.
And she turned it into a rabbit so it would have fur
and it would be warm again.
But this rabbit still laid eggs,
and that's why we have Easter bunny
and we have the Easter eggs.
Smart Cookie Fact of the Day.
So I've got a variety of different cookie cutters.
You can use whatever cookie cutters you want.
So you should have lightly floured your surface.
Then you'll just transfer these guys
to your parchment-paper-lined baking sheet.
I'll put 'em about an inch apart.
They're not really gonna spread like a
chocolate chip cookie would or a sugar cookie would.
I'm gonna put these in the freezer for about 20 minutes
so they'll hold their shape,
and then we're gonna bake 'em off.
They just bake for about 10 minutes at 350.
You're just looking for the edges
to start to get golden brown,
but you're gonna want these to stay pretty pale.
I'll show you what I'm talking about in just a moment.
We have baked off our shortbread cookies,
so you can see they are starting to get
a little bit of color, but mostly the tops of 'em
are still pale, which is exactly what you want.
These have been cooling now for about an hour.
You need to do it for at least a half hour
on a wire rack so that they're room temperature.
Okay, now comes the fun part.
Don't be scared; it's time to decorate, okay?
If I can do it, you can do it.
I'm a hot mess, you're probably a hot mess too.
We're gonna do this together.
It's gonna be fun.
Okay, so ...
To make things easier on ourselves,
I'm using meringue powder.
This is a pound of sifted powdered sugar,
so just a good ole box of powdered sugar.
It looks like a lot, but that's 'cause it's been sifted
so there's a little bit of air in there.
If you're using Wilton meringue powder,
there is a recipe on the back of the little container,
which is perfectly great.
And it's gonna tell you to start with
five tablespoons of water.
We know that that's gonna make a really stiff royal icing,
so we're gonna go ahead and double it, make it about 10.
But I'm gonna start with about half of that
just to get us goin'.
So as you can see, this is gonna be really thick,
but we're gonna let this whip for about seven minutes.
It's gonna put a bunch of air into the frosting,
which is what we need.
It's gonna turn this bright, brilliant white.
So I'll see you guys in a couple minutes.
(mixer whirring)
(Elise singing Jeopardy theme in chipmunk voice)
Great, so you can tell this is like really changed
its texture, it's super bright white, it's much more fluffy.
Yeah, see, this is a little too thick.
You can tell this is really gonna hold its shape
a little bit more.
We're looking for something that's gonna flood.
(whimsical instrumental music)
Whoo, that's sweet.
That was a bad choice.
So just on a low speed.
(mixer whirring)
So we're not quite there yet ...
But, closer.
So let's add some more!
(mixer whirring)
See, little bit goes a long way.
(whimsical instrumental music)
Yeah!
That's the kinda consistency we're lookin' for.
Alright, so we've got our royal icing.
Now we are going to dye all these, because voila!
Everything's different than it was a moment ago.
So the first step is just to separate this out into
six different little bowls.
Gel food coloring is much more concentrated,
and it's gonna add color without adding water,
which can make a big difference,
especially when you're using something like royal icing
where even a tiny bit of extra water
really makes a difference in consistency.
Boom!
Look at those beautiful spring colors!
(Elise making shooting sound effects)
So we're gonna work on these
beautiful little cherry blossoms.
So this is pretty thin, so you're gonna need to
move quickly, but that's the whole purpose of this.
So the first thing you're gonna do is trace your outline.
Just trace the shape of your cookie.
You're gonna leave a little bit of a border,
and then we're just gonna fill it in.
And I probably can't talk and do this at the same time,
if I'm being honest.
So, phew, we got our outline ...
And now we just fill it in.
(cheery classical music)
So I have flooded this.
You'll notice that there are a couple of little holes,
but luckily, you can use a handy-dandy toothpick
to help with that.
So all you need to do before this dries
is just to use a toothpick to help you fill in
any little spots that didn't fill themselves in.
This one's flooded.
I'm going to carefully move him back to the tray.
I have to be honest with you, when I'm actually
decorating these, I have them like in my face,
like no personal space, like ...
Very, very close.
I'm gonna go work on the other ones off camera
so I can put them directly in front of my face.
And then, we're gonna let them set and dry out
for at least two hours.
We want to give this royal icing enough time to really
set hard before we do the next step of decorating.
Off we go.
Goodbye!
We're just gonna start right at the top.
We're just gonna trace the outline.
And these don't have to be perfect,
because you're about to cover them in sprinkles,
and sprinkles cover all kinds of imperfections, okay?
Just let the sprinkles guide you.
That's why I like sprinkles so much, because you're like ...
You know, like, don't look at this too hard.
There are sprinkles on it though.
You can't see any imperfections with the sprinkles there.
Look at that guy!
Isn't it cute?
So cute.
Easy peasy, right?
So, any imperfections that were on there,
you can't see because of the sprinkles.
So the tulip guy is really easy.
Also, I recommend doing this on top of parchment paper
so that you don't have to throw away a million sprinkles.
You can just put this right back in the jar.
This guy's really not perfect.
It doesn't matter.
I'll show you in a minute.
It does look like something from Nickelodeon.
♪ It's fine, cover it in sprinkles ♪
♪ Everything is fine ♪
See, nothin' to see there but beauty.
This technique is not hygienic...
(whimsical classical music)
But it's effective.
That's the thing, if I make these cookies for you,
I just need you to know that I have probably --
there's probably some spit on there.
I've definitely blown my hot air on top of 'em.
There's gonna be a little piece of me
in each of these cookies.
One more, let's do one more.
This is actually my favorite one.
This is like a mum flower.
That's my favorite one.
I just think that's so pretty.
So there's one more step in terms of decorating these,
and that is to attach them to some lollipop sticks
so that you can actually set them upright.
So I'm just gonna take some more of this royal icing,
'cause we know that this is gonna set really hard.
And I'm just gonna trace a line ...
About halfway up the cookie.
So I've got three lollipop sticks,
and I'm going to set this on the center one.
So, the reason I have three is these side ones
are gonna help keep it propped up so it's even
so that while it dries it's not tilting one way
or the other, or back and forth.
Now we're gonna let these dry for about an hour, two hours,
overnight if you have time.
We'll let that set up, and then,
I'll show you how to do the final step.
We're back!
Okay, so, I have now attached lollipop sticks
to all of these gorgeous cookies.
I mean, look at that.
Just with a little royal icing on the back.
We got some little whitewashed little terra cotta pots.
So cute!
And I have already poked a couple holes in the styrofoam,
so now what we're gonna do is plant our little flowers.
Come on styrofoam, there we go.
Look how cute those are!
I think that this is a lovely little display,
perfect for Easter.
You could also do this for any other kind of spring holiday.
Super cute, and then everyone can just
have their own cookie.
If you enjoyed watching me make these cookies,
then you should follow Smart Cookie.
Like, share, subscribe, comment, ring the bell!
I hope you have a lovely Easter.
See ya later.
(whimsical instrumental music)
Can I stop hopping now?
(whimsical instrumental music)
I'm tired.