How To Make The Cutest Fox Cookies

Sep 18

Sep 18 How To Make The Cutest Fox Cookies

Fox Faced Cookies to continue my learning curve of cookie icing. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that I really struggle with cookie icing but I am relentlessly trying to change that. This week, I decided to try out a technique I usually keep for salt dough decorations. It involves using a needle to pierce through a stencil into the cookie to create guidelines. I’m not a natural artist so, drawing things freehand and expecting them to match each other is totally beyond my scope. Add a piping bag to the mix and I’m a floundering mess. Next, I kept the design super simple so that I could use a needle to neaten up the edges and take the pressure off my piping skills.

So, if like me, you love this cookie trend but don’t love how difficult it is then this is the tutorial for you. Roll up your sleeves, grab a rolling pin and let’s get going.

What You'll Need (makes 12-15)

200g butter/spread
200g sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
520g plain flour
1 egg white (pasteurised)
4 cups icing sugar
Food colouring; orange and black
1 needle

Method

Cream together the butter and sugar with an electric whisk
Gradually add the beaten eggs, whisking continually
Gently fold in the flour, be careful not to overwork the dough
Cover with film and place in the fridge for 30 minutes
While that’s chilling, draw a fox face outline on a piece of card. Cut this out and then use it to create a fully drawn fox face on parchment paper, in pencil

Remove the dough from the fridge and roll to ½ cm thickness on a floured worktop
Place the fox faced card on top and cut around with a sharp knife to make fox shaped cookies. Continue until you have used all the dough

Pre-heat the oven to 190C
Place the fox cookies on a lined baking tray and bake for 10-12 minutes
Remove from the oven and leave on the tray to firm up for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely
While the cookies cool, whisk the egg white until it’s fluffy but not stiff
Gradually whisk in the icing sugar until fully combined
Split the mix equally into 2 bowls and put one to the side, this will stay white
From the other, take out 2 tbsp of icing and place in a cup. Colour the remainder in the bowl orange and the icing in the cup black
For all three colours, the icing should be a 10 second consistency, meaning if you draw a line through the centre it will take 10 seconds to disappear. If it doesn’t, add water slowly until it does
Cover the icing with cling film and move to the side (leaving it to rest allows the air bubbles to escape)
Back to the cookies and the fox-faced parchment paper
Place the paper on top of a cookie, lining up the edges. The pencil side should be face up
Using the needle, poke little holes all around the stencil lines, this will transfer the image onto the cookie, providing you with guidelines and making it easier to decorate later

Once all your cookies have a pin guide, transfer the icing to 3 piping bags. If you have small round nozzles, great, if not just cut small holes in the end of the bags
Pipe the orange colour first, don’t worry too much about staying in the lines. When you’re happy there is enough orange, take the needle and use it to smooth out the icing and straighten the edges

Leave to dry for 30 minutes
After 30 minutes pipe on the white icing. Again, use the needle to even out the edges
Leave to dry for 30 minutes
Take the needle and make little scores all over the orange icing to create a furry texture
I tried this with 3 different varieties (fluffed orange, fluffed white, fluffed both) but adding texture to only the orange worked out best. Cute as fuck!
Finally, add in a little back nose and eyes, I added a little flick at the edges because apparently, my fox loves Amy Winehouse
Leave to dry completely overnight