Wednesday, 30 March 2011

• Adorable Turtle Shaped Sugar Cookies

  This is a guest post from Kirbie's Cravings.
  
  

  

  I’m a little obsessed with turtles. When I was little my parents wouldn’t let me have a pet. My best friend had rabbits and cats and I was pretty upset that I wasn’t allowed to have a pet. One afternoon, after fighting with my parents over it, my dad went out to mow the lawn. A few minutes later, he came back and showed me a box turtle he had found in our yard. The box turtle ended up being my first pet.

  
  
  I didn’t know much about turtles but being the responsible pet owner, I did my research. I was so pleased to learn that turtles require little maintenance and live a long time. After that I became pretty obsessed with turtles. I have a lot of turtle figurines, stuffed animals, etc. I recently saw the cutest turtle cookies on Diamonds For Dessert.

  
  
  It then occurred to me that I had never tried to make turtle cookies before, even though I’ve made many other turtle shaped foods (such as the turtle soft pretzels and turtle steamed buns). After seeing the cute turtle cookies, I really wanted to make some.

  Mine don’t look as cute as the ones on Diamonds for Dessert. I ended up not doing the pattern on the shell and I think maybe it made a difference. Also I didn’t use the same recipe. Instead of ice box cookies, I made sugar cookies. The sugar cookie dough I used didn’t need to be refrigerated, but it also meant that my dough wasn’t as firm so it wasn’t as easy to shape.

  
  
  When I was photoing the cookies, I realized that at certain angles, a few of them look like the mushroom characters from Super Mario Brothers. After that, that’s all I could see. I’m going to play around with the design to make these as cute as possible.

  Recipe: Turtle Sugar Cookies

  Ingredients

  • 2/3 cup shortening
  • 2/3 cup butter
  • 1 1/2 cups white sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 2 tsp matcha green tea powder

  Instructions

  1. In a medium bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter, shortening and sugar. Add in the eggs and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt, add into the creamed mixture until dough comes together.
  2. Remove 2/3 of the dough. With the remaining 1/3 dough in the bowl, add in the 2 tsp of matcha powder and mix until combined.
  3. Take the plain sugar cookie dough and split it into half. Take one half of the dough and roll into a cylinder about 1 inch thick in diameter. Then take the matcha dough and roll out to a thin sheet, the same width as the cylinder. Then wrap the matcha dough over the plain cylinder.
  4. Slice the cylindrical dough to form the bodies. I sliced mine about 1/4 inch thick. As you slice, the dough may flatten at the bottom. Try to shape the bottom so that they end up being round circles again.
  5. Using the remaining plain dough to form the head, hands and feet. Place the turtles on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or silpat mats, about 1/2 inch apart.
     
  6. Preheat the oven to 350 F degrees. Bake for 10-12 minutes until edges turn a golden brown.
  7. After turtles have cooled, decorate the turtles with eyes. You can add sprinkles, pipe melted chocolate, etc.

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