Eiffel Tower Cookies & Blog Make-Over
What better way of ending my Paris trip series and celebrating my blog make-over than baking something truly Parisian? Yes, Eiffel Tower Cookies! To read my 2021 Paris series, click here for part 1, part 2, and part 3.
As you might have noticed, last week I was experiencing some technical difficulties with my website and it got me thinking it was long overdue for a blog make-over. I tried some different website designs, and finally decided on the current one as it looks more modern and like a food website vs. an amateur blog. I mean I am still an amateur baker, but I like the homepage where you can see all latest posts directly, and not having to scroll down the entire post. What do you think about the new website design? I still need to tweak some things here and there, particulary, the recipe finder. So no worries, it's not finished yet.
When I went to Paris, I shopped at Anthropology, which is very hard to find in Europe. They have this cute 'French bistro'-collection that is just so instagrammable. I already bought the bistro spatula and Eiffel tower cookie cutter a while back and I was planning on baking these cookies for this year's blogoversary, but unfortunately, life got in the way again and I had to post-pone baking these. In Paris I bought the matching bistro plates, while my friend got the bistro mugs. We love this collection!
For the cut-out cookies I used my favorite recipe from Nigella Lawson.
Can you tell I have baked these cookies over and over again by these loose pages of the book?
Recipe
Butter Cut-Out Cookies by Nigella Lawson - 'How to be a domestic goddess'
Ingredients:
- 3/4 cup soft unsalted butter
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 2/3 cups cake flour, plus more if needed
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- cookie cutters
- 2 baking sheets, greased or lined with parchment or wax paper
Instructions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/gas mark 4.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and moving toward moussiness, then beat in the eggs and vanilla. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the butter and eggs, mix gently but surely. If you think the finished mixture is too sticky to be rolled out, add more flour, but do so sparingly as too much will make the dough tough.
3. Halve the dough, form into flat discs, wrap each half in plastic wrap, and rest in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.
4. Sprinkle a suitable surface with flour, place a disc of dough on it, not taking out the other half until you've finished with the first, and sprinkle a little more flour on top of that.
5. Roll it out to a thickness of about ¼ inch (0.6 cm). Cut into shapes, dipping the cutter into flour as you go, and place the cookies a little apart on the baking sheet.
6. Bake for 8–12 minutes, by which time they will be lightly golden around the edges. Cool on a rack and continue with the rest of the dough. When they’re all fully cooled, you can get on with the icing. Put a couple of tablespoons of just-not-boiling water into a large bowl, add the sieved icing sugar and mix together, adding more water as you need to form a thick paste. Colour as desired: let the artistic spirit within you speak, remembering with gratitude that children have very bad taste.
Recipe:
Royal Icing by Sally's Baking Addiction
Ingredients:
- 4 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted (480g)
- 3 tablespoons meringue powder
- 9-10 tablespoons room temperature water
- optional for decorating: food gel coloring
Instructions:
In a large bowl using hand mixer or a stand mixer fitted with a wisk attachment, beat all of the icing ingredients together for 1,5-2 minutes. When lifting the whisk up off the icing, the icing should drizzle down and smooth out within 5-10 seconds. If it's too thick, add a little bit more water. If it's too thin, add a little bit more sifted confectioners' sugar.
Does anyone else use their stove to cool down cookies?
I stack a cookie rack on top of the stove for even faster cooling.
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