Unicorn cookies recipe

Beautifully bright and brilliantly tasty unicorns and rainbows for dreamy kid's party treat.

If you know a kid who's into unicorns and rainbows, it's hard to imagine a biscuit that will get them more excited. These amazing unicorn cookies use a clever trick with the dough to get a full unicorn rainbow emanating out from the centre of every cookie. This recipe makes 8 rainbow unicorns and 24 little rainbows to arrange around them on the plate. You will need a unicorn shaped cookie cutter in order to make these. However, you don't need a semi-circle for the rainbows. That shape will appear naturally when you cut the biscuits in half before baking.

Ingredients

• 350g plain flour, sieved
• 100g self-raising flour, sieved
• 125g unsalted butter, cubed
• 125g granulated sugar
• 125g golden syrup
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• Red, yellow, green, blue and violet paste colour

You will need:

• 2 baking sheets lined with baking parchment
• Unicorn cookie cutter

Method

1. Put both flours and the butter in a processor and whizz to create a crumb-like texture.
2. Add the sugar, golden syrup and egg and blitz until just combined. Add up to 2-3 tbsp cold water if the mix is too dry to come together.
3. Divide dough into six. Add a dot of paste colour to each piece of dough and a dot of yellow and smidgen of red for the orange colour. Work each colour into each separate piece of dough.
4. Roll each piece of dough into a long thin sausage about 30cm long on a piece of baking parchment. Pop in freezer for ten minutes.
5. Keep the violet as a sausage, then roll the blue into a long rectangle, just big enough to wrap around the violet sausage. Then, roll out the green, and wrap around. Repeat with the yellow, orange and red. Freeze again for several hours.
6. Heat oven to 180°C or Gas Mark 4. Cut 8 x 2cm thick slices and 12 x 1.25cm slices. Cut thin discs in half to make rainbow biscuits and place on a lined baking tray.
7. Leave the thicker discs to soften for 20mins then, on baking parchment, roll out until large enough that you can stamp out unicorn biscuits. Peel away any trimmings and leave the unicorn biscuits on the paper.
8. Bake biscuits for 5-10 mins until just firm, taking care to watch them closely.

Top tip for making unicorn cookies:

Don't skip the chilling stage here - it's essential for keeping the dough and the right texture before baking, and you'll find your unicorns spread out into amorphous blobs otherwise.

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