Hi, I'm Amanda Haas, from OneFamilyOneMeal,
and I'm so excited to be baking chocolate shortbread stars with royal icing for Pottery Barn Kids today.
This is one of favorite baking recipes for the holidays because the cookies are super simple to make
and they're really fun to decorate with your children.
So let me show you how to make the cookies.
I'm actually starting with two sticks of unsalted butter, which I'll put in my mixer,
along with a cup of confectioners sugar, and all you have to do is mix those for about a minute or two
until it's well-combined and fluffy.
After that, I'm just going to add a tablespoon of vanilla, which is actually going to give the chocolate this amazing flavor,
along with some cocoa powder.
So I'll put those two things in next and again just let it mix for about thirty seconds.
Now I'm ready to add my flour. I've got one and a half cups, and one teaspoon of salt.
I like to use sea salt or kosher salt. You really can taste it, but if you prefer to make it a little more mellow,
and not have that salty flavor with your chocolate, you can actually use less.
Use like a half a teaspoon if you like.
Now all I have to do is mix it for about thirty seconds until all of my ingredients are combined
and it looks uniform in color,
and then I'll divide the dough into two pieces, and let those refrigerate for about thirty minutes
before I'm ready to roll them out.
My dough is chilled and I'm ready to roll it out. So I'm just going to lightly flour my surface,
And here's a great trick for you. I'm going to flour the top of the dough a little bit as well,
but as you roll out your dough, you want to make sure to give it a quarter turn,
every time you roll it. This makes sure that your dough won't stick to the countertop,
making it really easy to cut out the shapes that you want,
and transfer it to the baking sheet.
Now I'm ready to cut my cookies. I've got this great star-shaped cutter that I like.
It's probably about three inches, but you can certainly use any size that you like.
So I'll cut as many as I can with this dough, and I like to immediately re-roll those scraps,
and do it again.
I've pre-heated my oven at 350 degrees, and now I'm ready to transfer my cookies to a parchment-lined baking sheet.
I bake them for about twelve to fourteen minutes, and I rotate the baking sheets once during cooking.
My cookies are out of the oven and I'm going to let them cool on a cooling rack
for a few minutes before I decorate them.
Today I'm choosing to decorate them with royal icing,
and that recipe can be found on potterybarnkids.com.
I'm using a little bit of red icing and a little bit of white icing, which is perfect for the holidays.
I'll start by frosting my cookies with one color of glaze and allowing them to dry.
The I'll take the other color of glaze, and just put a few drops on top,
and use a toothpick to drag it through to create these beautiful designs.
You can certainly experiment with different designs and different colors on these cookies.
You can also let them dry just a little bit on the first layer of icing,
before you put the second layer on.
And that will create more of a swirly effect.
Whatever you do, just have fun with them. They'll be so much fun to make with your kids.
For more recipes like these, you can visit potterybarnkids.com, or my website at onefamilyonemeal.com.
