Baby shower cookies recipe

Cute cookies themed with babygrows and milk bottles - perfect for celebrating new arrivals.

These baby shower cookies are really easy to make. In fact, it's just a basic biscuit recipe. The creativity comes with the decoration. You could use royal icing made into soft peaks texture for these if you prefer. In that case, pipe a thin line around the edge in firmer icing and flood the middle with softer icing to create the full colour. However fondant icing tastes really nice, and makes the whole process easier. This recipe makes about 20 biscuits - perfect for a moderately sized baby shower.

Ingredients

• 10oz of plain flour
• ¼ tsp of salt
• ½ tsp of baking powder
• 4oz of unsalted butter
• 5oz granulated sugar
• 1 egg beaten
• 2 tbsp of milk
• ½ tsp of vanilla extract

For the icing:

• Dr Oetker pack of regal ice (white fondant icing)
• Pink, blue or different coloured paste
• Textured mats or rolling pins, to pattern
• Flowers, letters or fondant ducks, to decorate
• Icing sugar (for piping) or writing icing

You will also need:

• Cookie cutters or stencils in the shape of babygrows and baby bottles

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350F/Gas 4. Line two baking sheets with greaseproof paper.
2. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy then add the milk, vanilla and egg and mix until smooth. Sieve the flour, salt and baking powder into the mixture. Mix well into a dough.
3. Transfer to the work surface and shape into 2 discs and refrigerate for 2 hours. Cooling helps the dough keep a neater shape.
4. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to ⅛ inch in thickness.  Then, using the baby vest and bottle cutters, cut the shapes and transfer to the baking sheets. Bake for about 10mins until light golden but don't allow to brown. Cool on wire racks.
5. To decorate the babygrow cookies, cut and colour the fondant to your desired colour. Using the texture mats (or rolling pin) roll the icing over the top to create your pattern. Using the same vest cutter, cut to shape the icing. Brush the smooth side of the icing with a little warm water (to help it stick) and place on the cookie. Decorate as you wish.
6. For the bottles, roll your white fondant and cut with the bottle cutter. Using a sharp knife cut the top to where to milk would end. Stick on as before. Using your pink/blue fondant cut with bottle cutter again and cut just the cap part out with your sharp knife and stick in between the milk and teat. Repeat with yellow fondant but just cut and stick the teat part on. Using a cocktail stick, indent lines on the cap part below the teat. Go right across from one side to the other, so they look like vertical grooves.
7. Last of all using the icing sugar and a few drops of water make a thick paste and pipe two short lines, then one longer one and repeat along the edge, for the measure marks. Use writing icing for this if you prefer.

Top tip for making baby shower cookies

Use pink for a baby girl shower, blue for a boy or yellow or a mix of the two if you don't know yet.

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