My 3-year old daughter has been obsessed with dinosaurs for some time now. Her birthday is coming up soon and I asked her what kind of cake she wanted – and of course, she said a dinosaur cake. I thought I’d start experimenting with some dinosaur cookies first. They’d make a great topper for a cake or be suitable for goodie bags.
Makes approximately 100 (5cm cookies), 44 calories per serve
Prep time 45 mins
Bake time 30 mins
Decorating time 1-2 hours depending on how fussy you are
Ingredients
Sugar dough
200g butter
200g sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla essence
320g flour
1 tsp baking powder
Royal icing
400g icing sugar
2 egg whites
1 tbsp lemon juice
food colour of choice
water to mix to desired consistency
round sprinkles for spots
Note: I used 5cm cookie cutters like these. They’re pretty small but perfect size for toddlers.
Line some trays with baking paper.
Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Then beat in the egg and vanilla essence. Mix in the flour and baking powder until it becomes a crumbly dough.
Shape the dough into a ball on a lightly floured surface and roll out to approximately 1/2 cm thick. Cut out your cookies.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180C.
So that I can ensure even cooking, I like to only put one tray of cookies at a time in the middle rack. Each tray should only take about 5 minutes to cook because they’re such small cookies. Repeat until all the cookies are baked.
While the cookies are cooling, you can make your royal icing. I’ve put in a generous amount of royal icing for this recipe because it’s better to have more than less – especially if you’re making several colours.
Mix together the icing sugar, egg whites and lemon juice until glossy. It will be quite a thick paste. Divide it among a few ramekins and mix in the colouring of your choice in each. Add a few drops of water to each to get the right consistency for you to ice comfortably. Add to a piping bag / tube with a #2 (Wilton) round tip and decorate the cookies. Make sure you cover the unused icing with cling wrap so it doesn’t dry out.
Store in an airtight container. It should last up to 1 week in the pantry (longer if frozen).
More Tea Time Treat Recipes
- Chocolate Chip Lactation Cookies
- Super Easy Butter Cupcakes
- Quick Tea Scones
- Ol’ Cinnamon Roll
- Eclair Affair