Shortbread vanilla cookies & 100 FB fans celebration

Last week fanpage of Lemon & Strawberries has reached 100+ fans! It's a big thing for me and I want to thank you all for your likes & support! This kind of a milestone called for some special sweets - so I've decided to make these little shortbread cookies.

I made two versions - with sprinkled sugar on top and special "facebook" version decorated with royal icing. It was my first attempt to use it and I'm pretty proud of myself, as they turned out very cute! So, grab a cookie and celebrate with me!

INGREDIENTS:

• 240g flour
• 140g unsalted butter
• 60g sugar
• 2 yolks
• vanilla extract
• extra sugar for decoration
• 1 egg white for brushing

ROYAL ICING:

• 1 egg white
• 170-250g powder sugar
• food coloring (optional)

 

It's best if all of your ingredients are likewarm, so take the butter and eggs out of the fridge about 30 minutes before you start.
Sieve the flour, add sugar and butter cut in little pieces. Add 2 yolks and vanila extract. Using a mixer with a "K" shaped tip mix all of the ingredients into a cookie batter. You can also do it by hand, if your butter is not very hard it will be pretty easy. When you see batter is crumbly, form it into a ball, wrap in a plastic foil and put in the fridge for about 15-25 minutes.
 

When it has cooled down, sprinkle flat surface with some flour and roll your dough flat, about 3-5mm thick. Using cookie cutters cut your cookies out - I've used flower shapes, but it's totally up to you!

Preheat oven to 180°C (356°F). Place your cookies on a baking pan - I brushed it slightly with butter and sprinkled some bread crumbs to prevent sticking, but it's not necessary.
 

Brush half of them with egg white and sprinkle some sugar on top. The other half I left untouched, as I was planning to decorate them with royal icing.
Bake until they're gold-brown on top - about 20-25 minutes. Let your cookies cool down before decorating them.

Prepare royal icing - basically it's whipped egg white and powder sugar - I decided to use it, because it's really white and gets hard fast, so it's perfect for cookie decorations.
Start whisking egg white and slowly add sieved powder sugar - it's hard to say how much sugar exactly you will need, it depends on the size of your eggs and also how thick you want your icing to be. In my case, it was as thick as honey and it was perfect for covering top of my cookies.
I divided my icing in two parts and added blue food coloring to one of them. I've used liquid food coloring, so it was necessary to add a little more of powder sugar.

When your cookies are cool, start decorating them! I filled some of them with white icing and then drew "like" on them using these tools:

If you don't have anything like that, a toothpick or anything thin will work too!
On other ones I first drew the shape of "F", filled it with white icing and then covered the rest of a cookie with blue one.
Royal icing gets hard pretty fast, so if it will get too thick while you're still working on decorations, add few drops of water or lemon juice to fix it.

Let your decorated cookies to dry up completely (it may take up to few hours). When icing is completely dry, there is no problem with stacking the cookies on top of another or touching.

These cookies are delicious! Crumbly, but not too much - with vanilla and buttery taste. They're perfect with a cup of tea or coffee. They will last for about a week if kept in dry and cool place.

Let's celebrate!