Coffin Cookies

Coffin Cookies

Coffin Cookies

Feliz Dia de los Muertos/ Happy Day of the Dead! To honor the dead this year, I made coffin cookies. I ordered this nifty coffin cutter and imprint designs from Tovola and had a lot of fun making these cookies. I put aside enough dough from the previous post, Halloween Cookies to make these coffins and used the royal icing as well. The full recipe for the Chocolate Sugar Cookie and Royal Icing is below.

Coffin Cookies Set

Chocolate Sugar Cookie
Ingredients
2 cups (4 sticks) Unsalted Butter, softened

2 cups Sugar

2 Extra Large Eggs

3 teaspoons Pure Vanilla Extract

4 cups All-Purpose Flour

1 ½ cups Cocoa Powder

1 teaspoon Kosher Salt

Coffin Cookies Set

Directions
Sift flour, cocoa powder and salt in large bowl and combine with spatula; put aside.

Cut each stick of butter into 8 pieces.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl of an electric mixer with paddle attachment on low to medium speed. Mix until incorporated, about 1 minute.

Scrape sides of bowl with spatula and mix again for 5-10 seconds more.

Add eggs one at a time. Scrape down bowl with spatula and mix again for another 10 seconds.

Add vanilla extract and mix for 1 minute.

Slowly add flour mixture to bowl and mix on low speed for 1 minute. When dough clumps around paddle attachment, it is ready.

Use rolling pin and roll out dough between 2 pieces of parchment paper.

Cover dough with plastic wrap and cool in fridge for 1-2 hours or overnight.

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Take one quarter of dough, and roll out to desired thickness and cut out desired shapes. Repeat rolling the dough and cutting shapes until you have used it all.

Place cookie shapes on parchment lined baking sheet and space apart 2 inches. Put cookies in the freezer for 5 minutes before baking. They hold their shape when you do this.

Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes, or until center of cookie no longer looks wet. My cookies baked in 10 minutes.

Let cookies cool in baking sheet for 5 minutes and transfer to wire rack to

cool completely, about 1 hour.

Let cookie sheets cool completely before you bake again. I put the cookie sheet in the freezer for 5 minutes. Repeat until you have baked all the cookies.

Coffin Cookies cooling

Royal Icing
Ingredients
4 Egg Whites

4 teaspoons Lemon Juice, freshly squeezed

6 cups Confectioners Sugar, sifted

Directions
In a medium size bowl, whisk together the egg whites and lemon juice.

Transfer to stand or hand held mixer with paddle attachment.

Slowly add sifted sugar and beat on low until smooth.

If needed, you may add 1 teaspoon of water at a time until you reach the right consistency. Watch the Joy of Baking (link at the end) video for both Flooding Consistency and Piping Consistency Royal Icing. If you prefer a recipe using Meringue Powder, it is also available at this link.

I separated the icing in plastic containers with lids according to the different colors I needed for tinting and used Americolor Soft Gel Paste Food Colors.

Keep the containers covered until you are ready to color. Royal Icing hardens fast so keep it covered when not in use.

White Squeeze Bottles

I transferred the icing immediately into small Squeeze Bottles using a funnel to prevent it from spilling. Keep the squeeze bottle tips covered.

If the Royal Icing hardens due to exposure to air, spray a little bit of water and shake bottle well holding the tip with your finger. Test the icing consistency on a paper towel before decorating the cookie.

I carefully added the royal icing into the impressions.

Let dry 4-5 hours or overnight.

For further information:
For the Chocolate Sugar Cookie recipe, please visit Sweetopia:
http://sweetopia.net/2013/12/chocolate-sugar-cookie-recipe-cut-out-cookies/

Please visit, Joy of Baking for the Royal Icing Recipe and Video Tutorial:
http://www.joyofbaking.com/RoyalIcing.html

Enjoy!

-Sophia/Two Frys