Iced Butter Cookies

  

Aren't they pretty?

One of my mom's colleagues was having an office baby shower a few months ago and I made these cookies for it.  As you might have guessed from the color of the icing it was a boy!

These cookies were really fun to make and really good to eat.  The cookies are from Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess.  I believe she calls them 'butter cut-out cookies'.  They are sort-of sugar cookies, but a bit less sugary and a bit more buttery (always good).  They weren't too crisp (not that they were soggy, but they were soft-ish), perhaps because I made them a little on the thick side or perhaps that is just how the recipe is.  I really like that.

I made a really simple icing of powdered sugar with a little vanilla extract, food coloring.  Then I mixed in water until it got to a spreadable consistency.  I just piped it onto the cookies using a plastic bag with the corner cut off (I didn't want to bother with a proper icing bag).  The icing was sweet and sort of creamy even after it hardened on the outside.  Hardened isn't really the right word, but if you have ever used any kind of icing before you will know what I mean about the outside forming a thin, hardened (still not quite the right word) layer.