One thing I love about baking at home is that my mom has lots of beautiful plates that I can use for my food photography. She has all sorts of different size plates and tea cups that she accumulated over the years from around that world that make the perfect prop for food styling. I’m still on a christmas baking quest and today’s menu is orange cinnamon cookies.

I did not have any snowflake shaped cookie cutter so I used a star cookie cutter instead and decorated it using melted white chocolate. You can use icing gel if you prefer. One thing about making cookie dough – they are best made a day ahead and then stored in the refrigerator for the flavour to settle in.

It can be quite tricky working with melted white chocolate because they tend to harden quickly which could clog up your pipping nozzle. What I normally do is to place the nozzle in boiling hot water so that it would remain hot/warm while I’m pipping the white chocolate. Alternatively you can use a icing gel which is easier to work with but I prefer the taste of white chocolate.

Nutrition per cookie (one batch makes 40)

Ingredients

1. 140g unsalted butter (room temperature)
2. 100g caster sugar
3. 2 egg yolks
4. Zest 1 orange
5. 1 tsp vanilla essence
6. 240g plain flour
7. 1 tsp baking powder
8. 30g white chocolate (for decoration)

Directions

Preparation time: 10min for the cookie dough and 30min for the pipping
Baking time: 15-20min or when the cookie turns golden brown

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees
2. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy
3. Add in the two egg yolks, orange zest and 1 tsp of vanilla essence and continue to cream
4. Sieve the flour and baking powder into the creamed mixture. Fold it in until a dough forms
5. Cling wrap it and leave it in the fridge overnight or in the freezer for an hour
6. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees
7. Roll the dough out and cut it out into shapes using a cookie cutter
8. Bake it in the oven for about 15min or until it turns golden brown
9. Leave it to cool
10. Place the white chocolate in the microwave in bursts of 30 seconds until it melts
11. Place the pipping nozzle in boiling hot water
12. Prepare the pipping bag and nozzle and place the melted white chocolate into the pipping bag
13. Pipe the different shapes and patterns onto the cooled cookies

There you have it! Pretty snowflake cookies all ready for your christmas party.