Resting and Decorating 1 hourhour10 minutesminutes
Total Time 1 hourhour50 minutesminutes
Servings 2dozen
Ingredients
Chai Fall Cookies
2 cupsbuttersoftened
1cupbrown sugar
2tspvanilla
3.5cupsflour+ extra for rolling pin
2.5tspcardamom
2tspcinnamon
1.5tsp salt
1.5 tspground ginger
1tspnutmeg
1 tspground cloves
.5 tspblack pepper
Royal Icing
.5cupliquid egg whitespasteurized
4cupspowdered sugar
1tsp vanilla
Instructions
Chai Fall Cookies
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
Cream room-temperature butter with brown sugar until fluffy (3-5 minutes).
Add vanilla extract and mix again until combined.
Sift flour, cardamom, cinnamon, salt, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and pepper together and mix into wet ingredients.
Form a brick with dough and wrap tightly in plastic. Freeze for 30-45, until very firm.
Hit the brick of dough with a rolling pin to slowly flatten. Finish rolling out on parchment paper until 1/2 inch thick. If the dough is too warm (if it leaves a very oily residue on your hands or sticks to work surface), re-wrap the flattened dough (as is, don't form back into a brick) and place back in the freezer for 15-20 minutes to firm up again.
Using the cookie cutters, carefully stamp out shapes and lay them on the baking sheet. If the dough begins to stick to the cutters, stretch (instead of pulling away from the dough easily), or feels very oily, put it back into the freezer as is until firm again. Shortbread dough, as it is made with a lot of butter, needs to stay cool, otherwise, the butter begins to melt and the dough breaks down.
Place filled cookie sheets in the freezer for 10 minutes and then transfer directly to preheated oven. This step allows the cookies to harden once again and keep their shape better in the oven. Bake for 18-25 minutes (depending upon size). Cookies should look "tanned" and edges darkened.
Let cool on pan for 5 minutes. Then transfer to wire rack to finish cooling. Wait at least two hours before adding icing.
Icing The Cookies
Beat the egg whites on high until it creates foamy peaks. Be patient!
Slowly add the powdered sugar to the egg whites and beat together on low.
Add the vanilla and beat again on high until thick, icing-like consistency (about 5 minutes). You want the icing to be so thick (like honey) that if you run the back of a spoon through it, a few seconds will pass before the icing starts to fill itself in. You can add more powdered sugar if yours is too thin, but these measurements work every time for me!
Pour 1/2 of the icing into a bowl, and 1/4 into another bowl. Set the remaining icing aside.
In the first bowl, add yellow and red food coloring gel and mix until orange. Adjust as necessary to get a perfect pumpkin color. In the second bowl, add yellow and blue food coloring gel and mix until green, to make the stem of the pumpkin. Adjust color as necessary, adding more of one color or another to get the right shade.
First, we use a thicker consistency (think: honey) to outline the cookies. This is the consistency we made our icing at the beginning of these steps.Scoop some orange icing into a prepared piping bag (with #3 or similar tip), and outline the border of your pumpkin cookie, like you would pipe frosting onto a cake. It is easier to hold the tip of the bag up a bit off of the cookie and let the icing fall out onto the cookie, instead of dragging it along.
Add just a few drops of water to the orange icing in the bowl and mix. Try to aim for the consistency of shampoo. This will "flood" the inside of the cookie and make a nice smooth layer of icing. (If you add too much water, mix in a bit of the thicker icing. We set aside the white icing before, and this works great for "fixing" mistakes.)Add this icing to your bag, mix it around a bit, and then fill in the border with the thinner orange icing. Use a toothpick to smooth any holes or clean up any extra.
Fill another piping bag with the green frosting, and use it to add a small stem to the top of your pumpkin. Let dry. Once the icing has hardened slightly (30 minutes or so), you can go back and add more details (like a little curly-cue vine from the stem, for example).
Add a small amount of orange icing to the green, and combine to make a warm brown color. Use this for the tops of your acorns. This will also make a great color for the stem of your leaves, later!
Add more red coloring to the orange, mix, and put in a piping bag. You can also add more yellow to the orange, mix, and put it in another bag. If you want a very bright red or yellow, use some of the white icing set aside and made a "new" color altogether.
Using red, orange, and yellow bags, outline and flood your leaves. You can feel free to get creative with the color options. Remember, in nature, all the leaves are unique, so don't stress too much about making them perfect. Use the toothpick to swirl the colors together and fill in any holes. Add a brown stem as decoration.
Add some white icing to the brown to make a lighter shade, and finish off your acorns. You can even use plain white to make a small "reflection" on the nut of the acorn, adding some depth. Be artistic with it and have some fun!
Let the cookies air dry (not in the fridge), uncovered for 24 hours. Once they are fully hardened (after 24 hours) you can stack these cookies on top of one another, and store in a sealed container for a few days.