Dotty Chocolate Smarties Cookies

I've been eating a lot of junk food recently. Smarties are my current favourite.

The switch from "healthy greens with every meal" to "Pocky sticks and coffee for breakfast" wasn't intentional. I believe it to be a symptom of the overall unstructured nature of my life recently. Without the structure of university lectures, hospital rounds, and group study sessions, my research year has quickly degenerated into a seemingly endless and timeless continuum of number-crunching, data-manipulating, and journal article-perusing. Most of the time I walk around in a semi-asleep state. It doesn't help that I only interact with other human beings (who are not family) maybe once or twice a week. That's the thing - I miss people. I miss social interactions. I miss the hustle and bustle of the hospital environment, the beeping of machines, the charts, talking with patients, listening to hearts and lungs...all those things about my clinical placement which overwhelmed me last year, I miss with an almost painful intensity now.

Not that I dislike research. A few days ago I realised that I had recoded the variables in my dataset with the wrong values, and that was why the results weren't making any sense. I corrected the values, and suddenly, there were trends and correlations and associations. Not just any associations, but significant ones. As in, 'p < 0.05' significance. I got a massive high out of the findings. If research was all about ground-breaking discoveries, then I may very well consider it as a long-term career. However, the reality is that most of it is number-crunching, data-manipulating, and journal article-perusing. But when you do make that discovery, it's all the more rewarding.

Anyway, the fact that I don't have to see my peers on a regular basis has meant that I've kinda...let myself go. Not in the sense of gaining huge amounts of weight. Just...very out of shape. Compared to last year, where I was eating a lot of protein and fibre and exercising almost every day, my current lifestyle is ridiculously unhealthy. I feel breathless walking uphill to the shops, where as last year I could have sprinted the entire distance and not broken a sweat. I can't even run 2km anymore, let alone the 14km that I did for City2Surf last year.

Moreover, I've found myself getting quite moody around noon, and quite predictably so. I suspect it has a lot to do with crashing from the refined sugar highs induced by my junk food breakfasts. My cognition has also suffered a lot. I had such brain fog one day that I couldn't remember how I got from one place to the other. It felt like I'd suddenly materialised at the shopping center, and I had very little recollection of the actual trip. What mode of transport had I taken? How long did my journey take? It was a very disturbing sensation indeed.

Therefore, I've made a pledge to myself to go back to eating proper, wholesome foods from now on. These cookies are my way of using up the last of my Smarties stash, while also acting as a remind that there is nothing inherently wrong with refined carbohydrates and these so-called "empty" calories. I admit it - while I was actively trying to lose weight, and for the first few months of maintenance, I was very neurotic about food. I could eat this, but not that. Some foods were "bad" and should never be consumed. Protein bars were okay, but chocolate bars were not (even though the former was probably just as lacking in real nutrition). I didn't allow myself to have any junk food, and as a result of that I went nutso and ate EVERYTHING once I couldn't stand my restrictive, "healthy" diet anymore.

Since then, I've learnt moderation, and that junk food doesn't make you gain weight as long as you don't overeat in calories. It's how it makes you feel that should make you think twice about consuming it in excess. I want a good-looking, healthy body, but a healthy mind also. I don't want to have a depressive slump every afternoon. I don't want my brain to be so fogged over by high blood sugar levels that I can't interpret lab results, or fall asleep over my textbook. The point is, by all means eat junk food, but don't use it as a replacement for real nutrition. It's common sense to most people probably, but it's taken my own experiences to make me actually believe it.

Healthy or no, these cookies are delicious, and oh-so-adorable. I love multi-coloured dots, whether it be in fashion or food. They are super-easy to make. Just combine the ingredients for the cookie dough, pop it in the fridge to firm up a little (so that the cookie doesn't spread too much while baking), shape it into small discs, then press on the smarties. They take around 8-10 minutes to bake. The texture is a little harder than cakey, but not quite crunchy, I suspect that if you bake it for an extra minute, you'll end up with a crisp, chocolatey cookie.

Dotty Chocolate Smarties Cookies
Makes 32 palm-sized cookies

Ingredients

200g unsalted butter, softened
300g white granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
350g plain flour, sifted
50g cocoa powder, sifted
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Smarties to decorate (enough for 5 per cookie)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit). Place baking rack at the bottom 1/3 of the oven.

2. In a dry bowl, stir together the sifted flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

3. In another bowl, cream together the butter and sugar with an electric or hand mixer until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla extract, and continue to mix until fully incorporated.

4. Add the dry ingredients to the creamed butter mixture, and mix at low speed until just combined. Do not overmix or your cookies will be tough. If necessary, use hands or a wooden spoon to finish mixing together the dough.

5. Wrap the dough in cling wrap, and chill in fridge for 30 minutes.

6. Line a baking tray with non-stick baking paper. Grab a ball of dough slightly smaller than the size of a golf ball. Roll it into smooth ball, then flatten into a disc. Place onto baking paper, and press 5 Smarties on top of each disc.

7. Bake in oven for 8-10 minutes. Remove from oven, and allow to cool slightly and harden before transferring onto a wire rack to cool completely. But, by all means, eat them while they're still warm and soft! :D

'Festive' Cranberry-Pistachio Shortbread Rounds

We were gifted with a huge bag of craisins (i.e. dried cranberries) a while ago. My mind immediately started racing with possibilities for its use: cranberry and white chocolate chunk cookies, plumped up with rum for a fruit cake, and...well, the cranberry and pistachio combo is always a good one! Particularly during the festive season. I mean, just looking at these red and green-studded shortbread rounds conjures up images of Christmas-time.

The most fiddly part in the recipe is making sure the dough doesn't break apart when you slice through the pistachios. Once the dough is made, it is rolled up into logs, wrapped in cling film, and chilled in the fridge for an hour or so, until hard. It is then sliced into discs approximately 1cm thick, arranged onto a baking tray, and stashed into the freezer for a final firming-up. The reason why it is so important to have the dough frozen solid before baking is because of the high butter content of these cookies. If you try baking these right after making up the dough, the cookies will spread and you'll end up with palm-sized mounds, instead of nice shortbread rounds.

I think these would look lovely packaged in clear cellophane bags tied up with a golden ribbon, to be given as party favours or used as table settings. I simply cannot get over how pretty the colours are!

Recipe for Cranberry-Pistachio Shortbread Rounds

Makes 22 cookies, approximately 5cm in diameter

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (or 175g) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
1/2 cup shelled pistachios
1/2 cup dried cranberries

1. Make the dough by stirring together all the ingredients, until a soft dough forms.

2. Divide the dough in two portions. Roll each portion into a log, and wrap each log with cling film.

3. Place the logs into the fridge and chill for an hour, or until solid.

4. Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius (or 350 degrees Fahrenheit). Don't put the baking rack too close to the top, because your cookies will burn!

5. Take logs out of the fridge, and slice into round 1 cm thick. Put the dough rounds on a lined baking tray, and stash that away in the freezer for around 15 minutes, or until the dough is frozen solid.

6. When ready to bake, take the tray out of the freezer and put into oven immediately. Bake for 13-15 minutes. Don't wait for the cookies to brown, otherwise the colours won't be as pretty.

7. When done baking, take tray out of the oven. Allow cookies to cool on tray for 5 minutes, before transferring cookies onto a cooling rack. Let cookies cool completely before packing it away in an airtight container (that's if you don't eat them straight away!). Cookies will keep in an airtight container in a cool part of the house for around 5 days.

Doggy biscuits for the spoilt pooch

I wrote on Facebook earlier today, while the last batch of these peanut butter doggy biscuits were baking in the oven, that I was "so bored I baked cookies for my dog...probs time to go back to uni." It occurred to me afterwards perhaps this sort of attitude made me a bad dog owner. After all, if you really loved your dog, you wouldn't bake cookies for them simply out of boredom, would you? No, you would go out of your way to acquire the finest ingredients, and lovingly craft each and every one of the cookies so that your treasured pooch could have the artisanal treat it knows it deserves.

My two doggies, a few years back.

We have two dogs in the family, but it's only Wango, the chihuahua, which gets spoilt rotten. Our other dog - Bella the akita - is obedient, loyal, and affectionate. Wango, on the other hand, is more likely to pee on your shoes than to roll over, or beg for a bone. But it seems that, the more pairs of shoes he pees on, the more we mollycoddle him, and talk to him in a baby voice, and stuff him silly with delectable doggy treats. 

Aww, lookee at his little snout. And his itsy bitsy paws. And his ears(!) 

Don't make me get all eharmony video on you.

One of Wango's specialties is playing dead, so that we feel sorry for him and feed him watermelon and frozen yoghurt and all the other stuff dogs aren't supposed to eat. Except chocolate. Cos we don't want him actually dead.

A few days ago, I had a lightbulb go off in my head: why haven't I thought to bake for my dogs before?! And before I get accused of being frivolous and wasteful: store-bought dog treats are much more expensive! And full of preservatives, and goodness knows what else. All it took was a quick search on the internet for a simple, peanut butter-based dog biscuit recipe, and checking to see what dogs are not allowed to eat (chocolate!) to come up with this recipe for Peanut Butter, Honey and Coconut oat doggy biscuits.

These are so simple to make: simply combine the ingredients into a dough, roll out straight away, cut out the shapes with cookie cutters, and bake for 15 minutes. I got about 60 chihuahua paw-sized cookies out of it. 

I'm not trying to pass these off as healthy dog treats, but they are what they are: dog treats. Save them for the special occasion when your canine friend finally succeeds in fetching that thrown frisbee, or for a doggy birthday party, or on the off-chance that your chihuahua decides to pee in the bushes, rather than on your groceries.

(Wanna know something funny? My sister's been secretly eating the cookies. She usually has very little interest in my baked goods, only nibbling on a sample and then forgetting all about it. Kids. I'll never understand them :D)

A futile attempt to get Wango to exercise off some of his excess pudge.

Recipe for Peanut butter, honey and coconut oat doggy biscuits

Adapted from The Doctor's Dishes

Ingredients

Makes around 60 mini cookies

2/3 cup smooth peanut butter

2 cups all-purpose/plain flour

1/4 cup desiccated coconut

1 cup raw rolled oats

2 tablespoons honey

1 cup water

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celsius (375 degrees Fahrenheit).

2. Combine all ingredients in a bowl.

3. Mix together with hand or wooden spoon to form a smooth dough.

4. Roll out the dough to around 8mm thick. Cut out the biscuits with cookie cutters of choice.

5. Bake in oven for 15 minutes. Cool, then serve to your greedy doggle!

Wango in a tree, back in his more daring (and skinny) days.

Valentine's Day Madeleines

Facebook was positively a-buzz yesterday with updates about Valentine's Day, with accompanying pictures of impressive arrays of flowers sent by the Significant Other of the owner of the updates. Being my usual competitive self, I parried the onslaught of nauseating expressions of luuurve with photos of these:

That's right, they're Valentine's Day Madeleines! I did start off referring to them as "red velvet Madeleines", but have decided to switch tags since, upon careful consideration, these aren't really "red velvet" as they lack the usual ingredients of cocoa powder. They're still red, though. Clearly!

To be honest, I only made some of the batch red as an after-thought; the real objective was to try out my new Madeleine pan, purchased impulsively during a recent shopping spree in Balmain.

Most of the madeleines were of the natural hue, as I feared that the artificial colouring may turn people off. To get the red colour, I simply dissolved a bit of powdered colouring in water, and added that to the remaining batter.

That's some powerful stuff! Like love. Okay, I'll stop it.

The natural-coloured ones I dusted with a bit of icing sugar, to great effect:

Making these also presented another opportunity to use my beloved, new KitchenAid. As you can see from the picture below, I added lime zest to the madeleine batter. The original recipe called for lemon zest, but I found that the lime flavour went very well with the honey in the batter. And anyway, green zest is fun-ner than yellow zest!

The recipe was for 12 big madeleines, or 72 small ones, but I ended up with enough batter for 15 big ones, meaning that I had to bake the final 3 in a second batch. And, even though I adhered to exactly the same baking times and methods as the first batch, my red madeleines came out browned around the edges. Definitely not as pretty as the first batch:

First batch on the bottom; the more browned, second batch is on the top.

Perhaps it had something to do with temperature adjustment? My oven has been acting up lately. However, regardless of the disparity in visual appeal, all the madeleines had the same, wonderful lime fragrance standing out against the richness of the butter, eggs and honey. The lime and honey combination is a definite winner; I'm excited to apply it to future recipes. Madeleines are best eaten fresh out of the oven, since that is when they're crunchy on the outside but moist within. They do have a tendency to become a bit chewy after cooling completely, but are still great as a snack. My siblings certainly gobbled them up when they came home from school. There almost wasn't enough for me to make a gift package out of them - for my friend, of course, rather than a genuine Valentine xD

Hope those of us with romantic attachments had a great Valentine's Day!

Recipe for Lime & Honey Madeleines

Adapted from From Donuts to Delirium

Makes 12-15 large madeleines

Ingredients

3/4 cup all-purpose/plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

Pinch of salt

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated white sugar

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon packed light brown sugar

Finely grated zest of 2 small limes

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Red food colouring (dissolve in few drops of water if in powder form): Optional

Confectioners'/icing sugar, for dusting

Method

1. In a bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt.

2. In a separate bowl, use an electric mixer or hand mixer to whisk together the eggs, honey, white and brown sugar, and lime zest. 

The eggs, honey, white and brown sugar, and lime zest

3. Beat until mixture is creamy and light in colour. Add the dry ingredients from step 1, and whisk until just combined. Pour in the melted butter, and stir in until well-incorporated. Cover the mixture in the bowl with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 1 hour.

The madeleine batter

4. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius (400 degrees Fahrenheit), and place the baking rack towards the bottom of the oven. Grease well a 12 mold madeleine pan. Use about 2 tablespoons of batter for each madeleine, or fill mold until two-thirds full. If you want to make some red like I did, reserve some batter to mix with the food colouring.

Madeleine pan, about to be filled with the chilled batter.

5. Bake for 5 minutes, before reducing heat to 150 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit), and baking for another 5 minutes. 

Fresh from the oven.

6. Remove from oven, and remove madeleines either by inverting the pan and tapping it against the counter, or gently prying the madeleines loose (don't burn yourself!) 

Serve madeleines warm, dusted with confectioners' sugar. If packaging in plastic, wait until completely cool. 

Skinny Nutty Biscotti

Happy Monday, y'all! I, too, am susceptible to the bout of blues that follows a sensational weekend spent having fun with friends and family, and absolutely dread the prospect of returning to the tedium that is "real life" (read: the weekdays). However, I am a firm believer in the maxim, "fake it till you make it". Perhaps a sense of genuine enthusiasm towards hard work and having to make an honest living will naturally follow my presently ersatz cheer. One can only hope.

In the meantime, how about a few of these Skinny Nutty Biscotti to go with your morning cuppa on this dreary Monday? I call these "skinny" for no other reason than the fact that it rhymes with "nutty" and "biscotti", and I happen to be teaching poetry analysis to my little protégés at the moment. I have no idea if these are low-calorie or "good for you", but I suppose the use of only egg whites may be a point of attraction for some. I personally find the notion of "healthy" desserts to be absurd. Eat your no-frills meat and vege during the week, and splurge on the good stuff on weekends. Why bother with the fat-free, sugar-free, taste-free substitutions? Honestly!

So that's my little Monday morning rant. Anyway, it just occurred to me that there's actually a better reason to call these "skinny"; look how thin the slices are! I've been on the look-out for the longest time for a biscotti recipe that produces the paper-thin (okay, cardboard-thin) cookies I've seen sold in Italian delicatessens. Prior to these, the biscotti I've made have been the chunky ones (see: these). And whilst they were crunchy and delicious dipped in coffee or tea, I do love how refined and delicate these Skinny Biscotti look:

I've adapted the recipe I found here to include quite a few different nuts. How many can you spot? 

Ready for the answers? We've got: macadamias, pistachios, walnuts and cashews, oh my! :D

Worry not about trying to slice through the nuts after the first baking. Learning from my disastrous attempt at slicing bread fresh out of the oven, I left the biscotti loaf to cool overnight before slicing it the next morning. My serrated knife made short work of the loaf, and within minutes I had a pile of beautifully spotted, soft slices of biscotti to return to the oven to crisp up. Do keep an eye on these around the 20 minute mark during the second baking because, as you can see from the picture above, these brown around the edges quite easily. And you wouldn't want to sully that pale, white canvas, studded with flashes of green and cream, would you?

Recipe for Skinny Nutty Biscotti


Adapted from the recipe found here


Makes 25-30 biscotti, depending on how thin you slice it


Ingredients


4 egg whites
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
100g caster sugar
120g all-purpose/plain flour
2 1/2 tablespoons canola oil
1 teaspoon almond extract
50g roasted or raw macadamia nuts
50g roasted pistachio kernels
50g roasted cashews
50g roasted or raw walnut kernels


Method


1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius (300 degrees Fahrenheit). Line a loaf tin with non-stick parchment paper.


2. Whisk egg whites and cream of tartar until fluffy, and soft peaks form. Slowly add the caster sugar, tablespoon by tablespoon, and whisk until stiff peaks form.


3. Sift in the flour, and stir gently to combine. Add in the canola oil, and fold gently into the batter. Add all the nuts, and stir in.


4. Pour mixture into the lined loaf tin and bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until the surface is light brown.


5. Remove from oven, and allow to cool in tin slightly before placing on cooling rack. Allow to cool overnight, or for 5 hours at least.


6. The next morning (or whenever the loaf has finished cooling), preheat oven to 120 degrees Celsius (250 degrees Fahrenheit). Cut the cooled loaf into thin slices, around 5mm in thickness, with a serrated knife. Place on lined cookie trays and bake in preheated oven for 30-45 minutes, flipping the biscotti over halfway through. The biscotti are done baking when they feel dry and crumbly to the touch, but may be slightly soft and springy. Do not let them brown.


7. Remove from oven and cool completely before serving. Biscotti are great for dunking into a steaming cup of coffee or tea. Store in an airtight container to keep the biscotti crispy.

Coconut Nutella Crunchies

I tested out a second recipe from The Australian Women's Weekly 'The Afternoon Tea Collection' yesterday. While my dough for the Melting Moments was chilling in the freezer, I got to work on these Coconut Nutella Crunchies:

These are essentially cookie sandwiches made from coconut honey oatmeal cookies, with a layer of Nutella in between. I substituted some ingredients in the original AWW recipe with what I had lying around. I used honey where the recipe called for treacle or golden syrup (although, I did find a jar of golden syrup in the cupboard right after I added the honey. darn it! :D), and used Nutella in the place of chocolate ganache, because I couldn't be bothered to make the latter.

The cookies were made with self-raising flour. This, combined with the eggs in the dough, makes for a crumbly, pillowy cookie. I'm quite happy with my substituting Nutella for chocolate ganache, since Nutella makes everything taste good and the hazelnut flavour adds yet another dimension to the cookie. However, I do believe that chocolate ganache will set harder, and maintain the structural integrity of the cookie, whereas the Nutella sorta just melted and smeared everywhere. A few hours in the fridge did help to rectify the situation.

As with the Melting Moments, I recommend chilling the dough in the freezer before shaping it. I made pretty criss-crossed indentations on each cookie with a fork before putting them in the oven, and I was saddened to see that the pattern was lost after baking. Oh well. When baking for family (and oneself), it's the taste that counts more than anything else. And these taste good, believe you me :D *wanders off to eat another Coconut Nutella Crunchy*.



Recipe for Coconut Nutella Crunchies

Adapted from The Australian Women's Weekly 'The Afternoon Tea Collection'


Makes 30-40 Crunchies, depending on how big you make them

Ingredients

For the cookies:
125g (4 ounces) butter, softened
3/4 cup (165g) firmly packed light brown sugar
1 tablespoon honey
2 eggs
2 cups (300g) self-raising flour
1 cup (80g) desiccated coconut
1/2 cup (45g) raw rolled oats

For the filling:
Large jar of Nutella or other hazelnut spread (no, you won't need the whole jar. I simply didn't take note of how much I used, sorry xD)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit). Place baking rack towards the centre of the oven, closer to the bottom. Line baking tray with baking paper.

2. Beat butter, sugar and honey in a bowl with electric mixer or beater until smooth, light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs. Stir in the flour, coconut and oats until fully incorporated.

3. Place dough in fridge or freezer and chill until hard enough to roll with hands. Dust your hands with flour, then roll rounded teaspoons of mixture into balls. Placed on lined baking tray, with about 5cm between each cookie. Dust fork with flour, and use it to flatten the dough balls.

4. Bake cookies for about 12 minutes. Cool on trays, then transfer to cooling racks.

5. Once cookies are completely cool, sandwich two cookies with about a rounded teaspoon of Nutella.

Melting Moments with lime buttercream filling

I think the name of the cookies is particularly apt for this time of year in Australia, wouldn't you agree? It felt like it was 45 degrees Celsius outside today! I felt like someone had converted my backyard into an open-air sauna. All the more reason to stay inside and have a few of these "Melting Moments" with a glass of iced tea :D

The original recipe for these come from The Australian Women's Weekly 'The Afternoon Tea Collection' cookbook. It's a nice, compact volume filled with pretty pictures of tea cakes, cookies, and slices. Even though I've got a thousand other baking cookbooks already (some of which I've only given a cursory flip through), I just had to buy this when I saw it at Costco, if only for the recipe for the delectable looking Melting Moments pictured on the front cover.

The cookies form a sandwich around a filling of lime buttercream. I was fortunate to come across the limes at a local Harris Farm supermarket for the unbelievable price of 10 for $2. I mean, I've seen these retail for $2 each at other fruit and vegetable stores. Except now I had more limes than I know what to do with. Lime iced tea, anyone? The original recipe calls for lemons, but since I did just come home with a whole bag of limes, lime buttercream it was.

True to their name, these cookies do indeed 'melt' as soon as you bite into one. I presented my sister with one when she came home from school today (congrats on starting high school, lil' sis!), and her eyes widened in surprise as her first bite sent crumbs a-flying, before gobbling up the cookie and asking for another. I had the same response for a number of taste-testers, so I can guarantee that these are worthy of your time!

I would recommend chilling the dough in the freezer for a couple of minutes before attempting to roll it into balls. The recipe didn't mention anything about letting the dough harden before working with it, which I felt was an over-sight. The dough right after mixing proved impossible to handle without it melting into a sticky gloop in my hands. Maybe the book was written during the wintertime? Anyway, chilling it will make it so much easier to shape the cookies, thanks to the huge ratio of butter in the recipe. Don't look so affronted; how else would you get the 'melt-in-your-mouth' effect? ;P

If limes aren't readily available, I imagine you could easily substitute in the juice and zest of a lemon or some other citrus fruit. It is preferable to use a citrus-flavoured buttercream, because otherwise there'd be nothing to cut through the richness from all that butter. The acidity comes as a nice surprise. It's so tasty I ended up making cookie sandwiches using leftover buttercream and some store-bought cookies.

Do give the recipe a go, and let me know how your 'Melting Moments' turned out :D And remember to drink plenty of fluids in upcoming days to avoid dehydration!

Recipe for 'Melting Moments' with lime buttercream filling


Adapted from The Australian Women's Weekly 'The Afternoon Tea Collection'


Makes 25 cookie sandwiches, or 50 individual cookies

Ingredients

For the cookies:
250g (8 ounces) salted butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup (80g) icing/confectioners' sugar, sifted to remove lumps
1 1/2 cups (225g) plain/all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (75g) cornflour/cornstarch

For the lime buttercream:
90g (3 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup (120g) icing/confectioners' sugar, sifted to remove lumps
1 teaspoon finely grated lime rind
1 teaspoon lime juice

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius, or 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Place baking rack towards the middle of the oven, closer to the bottom (this will stop the cookies from browning). Line cookie tray with baking paper.

2. Beat butter, vanilla extract, and the sifted icing sugar in a bowl with an electric beater or mixture until light and fluffy. Sift in the plain flour and cornflour, and mix until just combined with a spatula. Don't overmix, or your cookies will become tough!

3. Place cookie dough in fridge or freezer until slightly hardened. With floured hands, roll rounded teaspoons of dough into balls. Place about 2.5cm apart on a lined cookie tray (you may have to bake the entire recipe in a few batches). Flatten dough balls with a floured fork.

4. Bake the cookies for 13-15 minutes. Allow to cool on trays for 5 minutes before attempting to transfer onto a wire rack for further cooling.

5. Make the buttercream by beating together the butter, sifted icing sugar, and lime zest and juice until light and fluffy.

6. Once cookies have completely cooled, use around a rounded teaspoon of buttercream to stick together the two cookie halves. Serve with a dusting of icing sugar, if you like.