Vanilla Cookies - AKA Amelie's Valentine Cookies

Me and my partner don't really celebrate Valentines day. But this year my daughter who has 2 boyfriends, or so she informs me, wanted to make some heart cookies like the love heart sweets you can get for her boyfriends and friends at school. I also thought I would send this to baking mad to enter the valentines blogger competition even though my name has not been selected you can still send an e-mial with your blog to enter (sorry I am jibber jabbering)
Any ways as I was saying my daughter Amelie

who will soon be the grand old age of 5 wanted to bake these for her friends Leah & Olivia. Also the two loves of her life one of which she has been seeing since he started play school even though she does not get to see Zac at school, now as he goes to a different one, she still insists that they will get married and constantly asks about him. Her other boyfriend is Lucas who again she went to play school with but has only recently started talking about him.
So I have dug in my lovely pink folder (my recipe folder) for the most basic cookie for her to do as she insists to do it by herself.  And what I came up with is this vanilla cookie. You can find this recipe almost every where. Not sure where I originally got this from but it is so child friendly I thought it would be ideal for her. You will have to forgive me all t he photo's as I am having a proud mummy minute. The only thing she did not do was transfer the cookies to and from the oven and the whisk the egg white powder.

What you need:
10 oz plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
100g caster sugar
3 oz butter
1 egg, beaten
2 tbsp golden syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract

What you do:
In a bowl sift in your flour and baking powder,

add sugar and butter. Using your hands rub until you have bread crumbs.

 Add in your beaten egg, Golden Syrup and extract.

Mix with a wooden spoon until you your dough then starts to form.

 Using your hands squeeze then knead until it forms a dough.

 Transfer to a work top and knead a couple of seconds.
Place your dough in cling film

 and store in the fridge for a minimum of 30 minutes.

Pre heat your oven to 170oC and line some baking trays with grease proof paper.
Flour your work top knead your dough for a few minutes roll out

 and cut out your shapes place

on a baking tray and bake for 10 to 15 minutes until just turning golden.

Remove from the oven and leave on your baking tray for about 5 minutes or until they start to firm up. Transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool completely.
Decorate.
To decorate the cookies she used Royal Icing . For this I whisked the egg white powder up for her then Amelie got shift in the icing sugar

 and then she mix in the icing sugar and strawberry flavouring in.

Amelie then decided we would have pink icing so I added that for her and mixed it so that it was fully incorporated.
I then put the icing in the bottles for Amelie and let her decorate her cookies.

Amelie was also nice enough to let her brother Aron have some of her cookies to decorate.

Here is some photos of Amelie at work and her finished result

So that Amelie could get a heart shape on the round cookie she place a cookie cutter on the biscuit and piped icing inside it. I then carefully lifted the cookie off for her so that she could decorate it.

Here is the proud little baker with her finished biscuits. 

Even if I do say so my self I think my daughter has done really well. All that is left is take them round to her friends and boyfriends. What left we get to eat, which I must admit I am looking forward to tasting.

Happy Baking
Shelly
xxx