Playing Card Cookies Recipes

PLAYING CARD COOKIES

Steps:

• In large bowl, beat butter, egg and flour with electric mixer on medium speed (or with wooden spoon) until well mixed. Wrap dough in plastic wrap; refrigerate until firm, at least 2 hours.
• Heat oven to 350°F. Line cookie sheets with cooking parchment paper. On floured surface, roll dough to 1/8-inch thickness. Using playing card as template, cut dough into rectangles; place on cookie sheets. Reroll dough and cut additional rectangles.
• Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until set. Immediately remove from cookie sheets to cooling rack. (If only 1 cookie sheet is available, cool 10 minutes between batches.) Cool cookies completely, about 30 minutes.
• In medium bowl, beat meringue powder and cold water with electric mixer on medium speed until peaks form. Gradually beat in powdered sugar until soft peaks form, about 1 minute. Spoon one-third of icing into decorating bag fitted with fine tip; pipe outline of playing card onto cookies. Let stand to harden, about 30 minutes.
• Thin remaining icing with water until it becomes a spreadable consistency. Spoon icing onto each cookie, spreading with back of spoon to fill in space inside outline. Let stand to harden completely, about 30 minutes.
• Draw card details with edible markers.

POSTCARD COOKIES

Steps:

• Sift flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl.
• Place butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy. Mix in eggs and lemon juice. Reduce speed to low. Gradually mix in flour mixture. Divide dough in half; flatten each half into a disk. Wrap each in plastic. Refrigerate until firm, at least 1 hour or overnight.
• Preheat oven to 325 degrees with racks in upper and lower thirds. Let one disk of dough stand at room temperature just until soft enough to roll, about 10 minutes. Roll out dough between two pieces of plastic wrap to 1/4 inch thick. Remove top layer of plastic wrap. Using a small, sharp knife, cut out dough into 3-by-5-inch rectangles. Transfer cookie dough on plastic wrap to a baking sheet. Transfer baking sheet to freezer, freeze until very firm, about 15 minutes. Remove baking sheet from freezer and transfer shapes to baking sheets lined with nonstick baking mats. Roll out scraps, and repeat. Repeat with remaining disk of dough.
• Bake, switching positions of sheets and rotating halfway through, until edges turn golden, 15 to 18 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks.
• Working with one cookie at a time, spread a very thin, even layer of buttercream on cookie. Decorate cookies with frosting sheets according to package directions. Repeat process with remaining cookies.

PLAY DOUGH COOKIES

Steps:

• In a bowl cream butter, cream cheese and sugar until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla; beat until smooth.
• In a medium bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture. Stir till soft dough forms. Divide dough into fourths. Tint each with a different food color. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours.
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Working with half of each color, shape dough into 3/4 inch balls and for each cookie place 1 pink, 1 green, 1 blue and 1 orange ball together to make 1 large ball. Shape into a 12 inch long roll (like a snake), starting at one end, coil roll to make a 2 3/4 inch round cookie. Place cookies 3 inches apart on lightly greased baking sheet. Carefully insert lollipop sticks into bottoms of cookies.
• Bake cookies for 8 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool and store in an airtight container.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND WEDDING COOKIES

Steps:

• Line 2 x 900g loaf tins with cling film. Start by making the vanilla dough. Rub the flour and the butter together with your fingers until it looks like fresh breadcrumbs.
• Mix the egg and the sugar together in another bowl with a fork and when it is really well combined pour it onto the flour mixture. Add vanilla extract, cream of tartar and a good pinch of salt. Knead together with your hands until the mixture forms a smooth dough. Press the block of dough into one of the prepared tins, press it down really well with the back of a spoon or another loaf tin and cover with cling film. Set in the fridge for 30 mins.
• Make the chocolate dough in the same way, rubbing the flour, cocoa and butter together before adding the other ingredients with a pinch of salt, knead well and press into the remaining tin and set it in the fridge with the vanilla dough.
• Once both the doughs are firm take them out of the tins, remove the cling film and trim the blocks so they both have straight sides.
• Cut each dough block into 8 long slices along the length, then cut each of those slices into 3 strips. Stack the strips alternating to create a chessboard pattern, 4 pieces wide and 6 high - a cut through should be about the size of a playing card. Repeat the same process with the rest of the strips to give you 2 blocks of dough. Wrap both blocks really tightly in cling film, knock the sides on the work surface to give compact, flat sides. Return to the fridge to firm up for another 20 mins.
• Heat oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3 and line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment. Take the dough blocks out of the fridge, slice into 0.5cm slices. Lay the biscuits on the baking sheets and bake for 15-17 mins or until they are very lightly golden at the edges. You should be able to get about 9 or 10 on a baking sheet so you'll need to bake them in batches. Transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool while you bake the rest of the biscuits. If you want to trim the edges or cut out a shape from the centre do so just after they come out of the oven but before transferring to a wire rack (we used a mixture of heart, diamond, club and spade cookie cutters to create a fun playing card design).

SUGAR COOKIE PLACE CARDS

Steps:

• Put about 1 cup of the royal icing into a small bowl. Add water, 1 teaspoon at a time, until it's the consistency of toothpaste. Add 1/4 cup of this icing to a pastry bag fitted with a number #3 pastry tip; this will be your outlining icing. Divide the remaining icing between two bowls and color each in desired color using food gel colors. Add each to a pastry bag fitted with a coupler and a leaf tip.
• Thin the remaining 2 cups royal icing with water, 1 teaspoon at a time, until it's the consistency of shampoo or a very thick gravy. Put into a squeeze bottle.
• Outline the cookies: Hold the piping bag with the outlining icing securely in your hand. Apply a little pressure to squeeze out the icing and touch it to the edge of the cookie where you want to outline. Gently but evenly begin to squeeze out the icing, keeping the tip about 1/2 inch above the cookie, using that slack to guide the icing as if it were a string. Make nice, straight lines, touching down the tip to anchor the icing at the comers, making your way around the cookie to outline it completely. Once all the cookies are outlined, let the icing set, up to 2 hours.
• Flood the cookies: Holding the squeeze bottle very close to the surface of a cookie, squeeze out thick, squiggly lines across the surface of the cookie inside the outlined border to cover it almost completely. Use a toothpick to gently spread the icing and guide it to the edges of the border and to fill in any little holes, giving the cookie a gentle shake to settle the icing. The icing should be smooth and even across the surface of the cookie. Use the tip of a skewer to pop any bubbles at the surface. Repeat with the remaining cookies and let the icing set, about 30 minutes.
• Use the colored icings with the leaf tip to pipe a decorative border around the edges of the set white icing. Place the tip just above the cookie surface and squeeze gently, slowly releasing pressure while you pull away to make a leaf shape.
• Switch out leaf tips to #2 or #3 small round tips. Working with the same technique you used for the outline of the cookie, by anchoring the icing and then manipulating the "string" to make shapes, write the desired names onto the surface of the cookies. One easy and impressive lettering technique is the cursive print "Blend." Do a pretty, stylized capitalized first letter in the cursive style and then write the remaining letters in a lower-case print style. The first letter might be a little tricky, but you only have to worry about one! It adds drama, while the rest of the letters are very simple and easy to do.

JAM-FILLED PLAYING CARD COOKIES

Steps:

• Sift confectioners sugar into a large bowl, then beat with butter and zest with an electric mixer at medium speed until pale and fluffy. Beat in yolk, then beat in flour and salt.
• Quarter dough and roll out each quarter between sheets of parchment or wax paper into an approximately 9- by 7-inch rectangle (3/4 inch thick). Stack rectangles, still between paper, on a baking sheet and freeze at least 30 minutes.
• Preheat oven to 350°F.
• Transfer 1 paper-enclosed rectangle to a work surface (keep remaining rectangles frozen). Remove top sheet of paper and replace it loosely. Flip over paper-enclosed rectangle and discard paper now on top.
• Trim dough to a 71/2- by 6-inch rectangle with a sharp knife and a ruler. Cut lengthwise into thirds, then crosswise into thirds to form 9 (2 1/2- by 2-inch) rectangles.
• Carefully transfer cookies with a metal spatula to a buttered baking sheet and bake in middle of oven until edges are just pale golden, about 10 minutes. Cool on baking sheet on a rack 5 minutes, then transfer to racks to cool completely.
• Cut and bake 9 more cookies in same manner.
• Then make "card" cookies from remaining 2 dough rectangles: Roll out and cut in same manner as above, but before baking, use cookie cutters to cut out shapes from 2 corners of each card.
• Do not cut too close to edge or cookie will break. Bake cookies in same manner as solid ones.
• Arrange 9 solid cookies, bottom sides up, on a work surface and spread each with 1 1/2 teaspoons warm strawberry jam. Top each with a cutout cookie, pressing gently to help adhere. If necessary, spoon some of remaining jam into cutouts. Sandwich remaining cookies with warm apricot jam.