Sugar Cookies With Royal Icing, Daring Bakers Challenge September 2010

This is my second challenge with Daring Bakers, as always last minute preparation. I prepared the cookie only yesterday, and pictured today and posting now. Everything was in a rush.
The challenge for this month is from Mandy, What the fruit cake , we have to prepare a basic sugar cookie and make royal icing and use our creativity and imagination to make different shapes. We were also asked to choose a theme for the month of  September and prepare the cookie accordingly. If I have to think something special for the month of September,  it has to be Eid, nothing can be more special than that.
 Actually we visited our friend's place for Eid, so I thought I'll make these cookies and take it for them, since I couldn't make during that time now I made it.
 Anyway I'm not an expert in these decorating things, so I just made a very simple one with few colours of icing.
So here I'm with a very belated Eid wishes to  Muslims all over the world.

Recipe For Sugar Cookies and Royal Icing:

Ingredients:
For the Cookies:
Plain flour- 400 g
Butter- 200 g
Sugar- 200 g
Vanilla extract- 2 tsp
Egg- 1
For the Royal Icing:
Egg whites- 2
Lemon juice-2 tsp
Icing Sugar- 315 - 375 g
Vanilla extract- 2 tsp
Method:
For the cookies:

Cream the butter and sugar, do not over mix, just mix them to combine. Over mixing will result in spreading the cookies while baking.
Add the egg and beat together, then add the extract , mix it up. Finally add the sifted flour and mix it well to form like a dough. Divide the dough into two balls.
Roll out the dough between two sheets of parchment paper, cover with a cling film and chill in the refrigerator for minimum of 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 180 degree Celsius, fan oven 160 degree Celsius.
Take out the rolled dough from the refrigerator and cut it into desired shapes, I used a cookie cutter to get few shapes. Bake it in the preheated oven for 8 to 10 minutes, depending upon the size of the cookie.
If you are using a big cookie shape, it might take longer time.
Take it out from the oven and leave it cool down completely before doing the icing.
For the royal icing:

Mix the egg white and lemon juice in a large bowl. Add the extract and mix again. Add the sifted icing sugar little by little and mix it together smoothly. It becomes like a thick white paste.
Now add the colours according to your wish and start decorating.
You can use a piping bag, or even a freezer bag by cutting it's tip.
When you are using a freezer bag, make sure there is no air inside, so that the flow will be smooth when you are making the icing.
Also have a wet cloth or wipes on your side to wipe the tips of icing bag.
Use the icing immediately after you make, since it'll set quickly if you are making in a quite thick consistency.
Remember to cover the bowl of your icing, to stop forming layers on top.
There are two different types of icing flooding and thick icing.
Flooding method use less icing, which is used to cover big areas, and thick consistency for outlining.
Actually I used very less icing sugar, which resulted in a too flooding consistency and it came outside the shapes. So I din't get any proper shapes,  but it tasted really good. My kids just loved these cookies, how will they say no to these colourful and sugary cookies.
Have fun making your own sugar cookies with different decoration.

If you would like to join the Daring Bakers and have fun in making all these delicacies click here.