Gourmet recipe: the Christmas balls
For Christmas, have fun cooking shortbread not like the others ! You can then enjoy them as a family, or use them to decorate your tree or even the house.
Recipe for 25 to 30 balls of about 6 cm in diameter
Preparation: 30 min
Cooking time: 15 to 20 minutes (thermostat 6 - 180 ° C)
Rest: 3h
Ingredients:
for the dough:
300 g of flour
1 pinch of salt
200 g of butter
100 g icing sugar
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
For icing:
200 g icing sugar
4 tablespoons water
liquid food colors: red, blue, green
Preparation of Christmas balls:
Prepare the dough: mix the flour with the salt and the butter to obtain a texture of sand. Add the icing sugar, egg and egg yolk.
Mix, roll into a ball and chill for 3 hours.
Preheat the oven (thermostat 6 - 180 ° C).
Roll the dough down to a thickness of 5 millimeters, cut out circles with a punch or with a glass. If the balls are intended to be hung in the tree, make a small hole at the top of each with the end of a stick or a pencil.
Arrange the balls on the baking sheet lightly oiled, spacing them as the dough spreads a little ..
Bake at medium heat and cook for 15 to 20 minutes.
As soon as shortbread are cooked, take off with a spatula and let them cool completely on a rack. Optionally, proceed to cooking other batches.
Prepare the white icing to decorate the biscuits: sift 50 g icing sugar in a terrine placed in a bain-marie. Mix gradually with a tablespoonful of water while stirring, to obtain a thick but flowing paste.
Prepare three more icings, each time using 50 g sifted icing sugar and 1 tablespoonful of water, incorporating a few drops of red, blue or green dye respectively.
Make balls of different colors: to do so, spread each colored glaze on each biscuit with a metal spatula dipped in hot water. To obtain a thick layer, repeat the operation, but until the first layer is dry.
When all the biscuits are dry, decorate them with the white frosting, forming, according to your imagination, geometrical stars or figures and allow to dry completely.
These cookies can be kept for several days in an airtight tin box. If they are pierced with a hole, just pass a small ribbon to hang them in the tree.
Tip of the chef: you can decorate the balls with colored sugar, silver pearls, chocolate or colored vermicelli, mimosa seeds ... position the decorative elements before the frosting dries so that it can to jail.
All the editors wish you a good appetite and a merry Christmas!
