Christmas Vanilla short bread

Rich and crumbly vanilla short bread.

Ingredients:

180 grams / 6 oz plain flour
60 grams / 2 oz sugar
120 grams /4 oz  butter
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 tablespoon milk
Silver edible draggies

Icing:

6 tablespoons icing sugar
gel food colours green, pink, brown and yellow.
2-3 teaspoon water approx

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C / 350 degrees F
2. In a bowl cream together the sugar and butter.
3. Add the vanilla, milk and flour and make a dough.
4. Wrap the dough in cling wrap and chill for 30 minutes.
5. After the dough has chilled, roll it out on a dusted surface and cut out Christmas tree shaped short bread.

6. Place shortbread on baking tray and bake for 10-12 mins until slightly golden.
7. Remove from oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool.
8. In a bowl sieve the icing sugar, add a little water to form a thick dropping consistency icing that holds shape when piped.(The amount of water to add is approx and make sure the icing is not too runny otherwise you won't be able to pipe with it.)Divide the remaining mixture into into half and colour one half  green. Divide the remaining icing into three parts.Colour one part yellow, one part brown and one part pink
9.Make  icing bag  from greaseproof paper.
10.Fill the cones with prepared icing .
11. Start with the green icing and outline all the cookies with the green icing.
12. Thin the green icing by adding 2-3 drops water and use it to fill the inside of the green outlined cookies. This is called flooding. Leave the icing to set for 30 minutes.

13. Once green icing is dry. Pipe a base for the tree in brown icing.pipe. Next pipe yellow wiggly lines to represent tinsel on the tree.

14. With the pink icing pipe bows and stars to represent ribbons and stars on the tree.
15.Sprinkle some edible silver balls to represent baubles.

Allow the icing to set for few hours before wrapping the short bread in cellophane for gifts.

Submitting to:
Lets cook edible gifts for Christmas event by simply.food.