Playing Card Cookies Recipes

Steps:

• In a bowl cream butter, cream cheese and sugar until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla; beat until smooth.
• In a medium bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture. Stir till soft dough forms. Divide dough into fourths. Tint each with a different food color. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours.
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Working with half of each color, shape dough into 3/4 inch balls and for each cookie place 1 pink, 1 green, 1 blue and 1 orange ball together to make 1 large ball. Shape into a 12 inch long roll (like a snake), starting at one end, coil roll to make a 2 3/4 inch round cookie. Place cookies 3 inches apart on lightly greased baking sheet. Carefully insert lollipop sticks into bottoms of cookies.
• Bake cookies for 8 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool and store in an airtight container.

Steps:

• Sift confectioners sugar into a large bowl, then beat with butter and zest with an electric mixer at medium speed until pale and fluffy. Beat in yolk, then beat in flour and salt.
• Quarter dough and roll out each quarter between sheets of parchment or wax paper into an approximately 9- by 7-inch rectangle (3/4 inch thick). Stack rectangles, still between paper, on a baking sheet and freeze at least 30 minutes.
• Preheat oven to 350°F.
• Transfer 1 paper-enclosed rectangle to a work surface (keep remaining rectangles frozen). Remove top sheet of paper and replace it loosely. Flip over paper-enclosed rectangle and discard paper now on top.
• Trim dough to a 71/2- by 6-inch rectangle with a sharp knife and a ruler. Cut lengthwise into thirds, then crosswise into thirds to form 9 (2 1/2- by 2-inch) rectangles.
• Carefully transfer cookies with a metal spatula to a buttered baking sheet and bake in middle of oven until edges are just pale golden, about 10 minutes. Cool on baking sheet on a rack 5 minutes, then transfer to racks to cool completely.
• Cut and bake 9 more cookies in same manner.
• Then make "card" cookies from remaining 2 dough rectangles: Roll out and cut in same manner as above, but before baking, use cookie cutters to cut out shapes from 2 corners of each card.
• Do not cut too close to edge or cookie will break. Bake cookies in same manner as solid ones.
• Arrange 9 solid cookies, bottom sides up, on a work surface and spread each with 1 1/2 teaspoons warm strawberry jam. Top each with a cutout cookie, pressing gently to help adhere. If necessary, spoon some of remaining jam into cutouts. Sandwich remaining cookies with warm apricot jam.

Steps:

• Line 2 x 900g loaf tins with cling film. Start by making the vanilla dough. Rub the flour and the butter together with your fingers until it looks like fresh breadcrumbs.
• Mix the egg and the sugar together in another bowl with a fork and when it is really well combined pour it onto the flour mixture. Add vanilla extract, cream of tartar and a good pinch of salt. Knead together with your hands until the mixture forms a smooth dough. Press the block of dough into one of the prepared tins, press it down really well with the back of a spoon or another loaf tin and cover with cling film. Set in the fridge for 30 mins.
• Make the chocolate dough in the same way, rubbing the flour, cocoa and butter together before adding the other ingredients with a pinch of salt, knead well and press into the remaining tin and set it in the fridge with the vanilla dough.
• Once both the doughs are firm take them out of the tins, remove the cling film and trim the blocks so they both have straight sides.
• Cut each dough block into 8 long slices along the length, then cut each of those slices into 3 strips. Stack the strips alternating to create a chessboard pattern, 4 pieces wide and 6 high - a cut through should be about the size of a playing card. Repeat the same process with the rest of the strips to give you 2 blocks of dough. Wrap both blocks really tightly in cling film, knock the sides on the work surface to give compact, flat sides. Return to the fridge to firm up for another 20 mins.
• Heat oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3 and line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment. Take the dough blocks out of the fridge, slice into 0.5cm slices. Lay the biscuits on the baking sheets and bake for 15-17 mins or until they are very lightly golden at the edges. You should be able to get about 9 or 10 on a baking sheet so you'll need to bake them in batches. Transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool while you bake the rest of the biscuits. If you want to trim the edges or cut out a shape from the centre do so just after they come out of the oven but before transferring to a wire rack (we used a mixture of heart, diamond, club and spade cookie cutters to create a fun playing card design).