Autumn Wreath
Autumn Wreath, with Colourful Leaves
Ingredients
250g unsalted softened butter
250g golden caster sugar
2 free-range eggs, lightly beaten
½ tsp vanilla extract
500g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
Red, orange, yellow and green food colouring (choose paste, works better with the dough)
Method
Preheat the oven to 170 C (this is the usual temperature when we bake cookies).
Prepare your baking trays with baking paper.
Now the preparation has been done, it is time to start our recipe:
1. First of all, put in the stand mixer bowl (or any other bowl if you use an electric hand mixer), the butter and the sugar. We need to beat them until the mixture turns light and fluffy.
2. In the meantime, we beat the two eggs slightly and add the vanilla extract to the eggs, then pour it into our mixing bowl with the fluffy sugar and butter mixture and mix. Sometimes that may look like is curdled (depending on how large the eggs are); in this case do not worry at all. Just add one or two tbsp from our flour.
4. In a different bowl, mix together the flour and the baking powder and also the extra flavouring (if you decide to do so eg: 1-2 teaspoons of cinnamon, cardamon etc…), and sift it carefully.
5. Once the flour and baking powder is mixed, stir it into the mixture and with your hands floured (to avoid stickiness), work this mixture into dough.
6. Empty your dough on a floured surface and knead a little bit, until you form a ball.
TIP: if the dough is slightly sticky DO NOT add more flour to it. This is the proper texture you need to have at this stage.
Now, separate the dough in 4 equal parts, and colour it red, green, orange and yellow.
Then wrap each portion of coloured dough carefully in cling film and put it in the fridge to rest and the butter to become cold, for at least an hour or so.
As in most cookies’ recipes, we prefer to work with cold dough in order to ensure the butter does not melt out of the mixture before it is baked.
8. When the dough is ready, we take it out of the fridge colour by colour and roll it out to a 1/2 cm or 1/4 in thickness.
9. We have to be careful when we roll the dough out, as inconsistent thickness may cause failing results when we bake (the thinner cookies will be harder than the thicker ones may be softer and not brittle).
10. Once we are happy with the thickness of our dough, we cut our cookies using our the leaves’ cutters. Try to use 4 or 5 different sizes and patterns; that will make your wreath look better.
After you create your leaves, put all the leftovers of the dough together, and try to create a base for your wreath. Make sure you keep enough dough, in order to create a quite thick base, otherwise it will not be able to carry the weight of the biscuits (if you are planning to hang it)
11. Then we place the cookies on our baking trays, leaving a gap as they will rise slightly and you don’t want them sticking together as that will damage their shapes.
12. We bake for 12-15 minutes (depending how big and thick we cut it) or until they have a nice golden colour.
13. When ready, let them cool down on a rack for at least 10 minutes.
14. I would suggest, to not try to decorate them with water or royal icing. You want the colours to be the star in this wreath.
When everything is totally cold and firm, you can start assembling your wreath. Try to put the bigger sized leaves on the base so that can hold better. Put different colours leaves, the one next to the other and stick it with royal ROYAL ICING, or with water icing (125 ml of icing sugar and 15 ml of warm water. If it is too thick, add half a teaspoon of warm water and mix well)
Good luck and make them… colourful and tasty!!!
