Dough Ingredients:
340g butter, softened
400g white sugar
4 eggs
5 ml vanilla
625g all -purpose flour
9g baking powder
6g salt
Directions:
1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder and salt. Knead into a soft dough. Cover and chill dough for at least one hour or overnight (this mix also freezes well for later re-use ).
2. Pre-heat oven to 200 °C. Roll out dough on floured surface about 7mm thick. Cut into shapes with suitable biscuit cutter (eg. for a pukeko - a duckling shape will work) or make your own plastic cut-around shape (refer the printable instructions for a template). Place biscuits a few centimetres apart on a greased oven tray.
3. Bake 6 - 8 minutes in pre-heated oven (watch they don't burn). Cool completely, then ice.
Icing:
To prepare, mix icing sugar with a dash of vanilla and enough warm water to make a thinnish paste, then mix in your chosen paste icing colours. It should be thin, but not so thin that it readily runs off the biscuit. Paint each biscuit with the base (blue) colour and let dry a couple of hours before adding details (red beak, blue wings, white tail) using a slightly thicker piped icing. Alternatively you can pipe the outlines onto the biscuit then 'flood' coloured icing in between the lines.
Enjoy!
