Our Cookie Recipe

It’s not really a cookie recipe now I look again. It’s a biscuit recipe, and what’s more it’s not really mine, all hail Nigella Lawson. Crumbs… literally.

Because I feel we should test every cookie cutter we make, we needed a cookie recipe that worked every time. I needed to make sure, the cookie/biscuit held well. That the cutter didn’t make the biscuit too small, or too ‘rock hard’. You know what I mean, you cut out a dinosaur, or a stiletto heel, and the tail/heel is so thin, it breaks off or worse still, breaks a tooth!

Which recipes to use?

I’ve long since been a big fan of Nigella Lawson. In my house, she is so much more than a domestic goddess. That woman’s pancake mix, Victoria sponge and now party biscuits, have got me out of more scrapes than I can say. I’ve tried others, but I always come back to Nigella.

I’ll stop waffling now (haven’t tried her waffles yet!) and pass on the recipe. And at the bottom of this post, are some other recipes for you to try (in convenient download format!). Including the Guide Dogs for the Blind, dog biscuit recipe which you can use with our dog bone cookie cutter shown below.

Dog bone shaped cookie cutter made on a 3D printer.

Nigella Lawson Butter Cut-Out Cookie Recipe

You need…. to make 50-60 of Nigella’s number biscuits, or we found 20-30 normal sized biscuits. It takes approx 20 mins to make, 1 hour in the fridge, 8-12 mins in the oven. Then 2 mins to cool, 1 min to eat!!

175 grams soft unsalted butter
200 grams caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
400 grams plain flour – preferably Italian 00 (plus more if needed)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
300 grams icing sugar (sieved)
food colouring

Number biscuits made from a Nigella Lawson recipe

How to make them

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/gas mark 4/350ºF
Cream the butter and sugar together until pale, then beat in the eggs and vanilla. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the butter and eggs, and mix gently but surely.
If you think the finished mixture is too sticky to roll out, add more flour, but sparingly as too much will make the dough tough. Halve the dough, form into fat discs, wrap each half in clingfilm and rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour. Sprinkle a suitable surface with flour, place a disc of dough on it (not taking out the other half until you’ve finished with the first) and sprinkle a little more flour on top of that. Then roll it out to a thickness of about ½ cm / ¼ inch. Cut into shapes, dipping the cutter into flour as you go, and place the biscuits a little apart on the baking sheets.
Bake for 8–12 minutes, until they’re lightly golden around the edges. Cool on a rack and continue with the rest of the dough.
When they’re cooled, you can get on with the icing. Put a couple of tablespoons of just-not-boiling water into a large bowl, add the sieved icing sugar and mix together, adding more water as needed to form a thick paste. Colour as desired: let the artistic spirit within you speak, remembering that children have very bad taste!