We’re known for our creative tendencies here at Recombu, so with Christmas coming up we thought we’d show you how to make something a little bit special for the man behind Christmas.
Yes, Father Christmas, Jolly Old Saint Nick, Sinta Klaus – call him what you will. He’s been tech-savvy since tech was invented (got to keep up to date with those toy-trends, hasn’t he) so we reckon he’s an iPhone user. And even if he isn’t, who doesn’t love cookies? And who doesn’t love apps? You just can’t go wrong.
So show your appreciation for all those lovely gifts in your stocking by making him some super special handmade app cookies to keep him going on Dec 24th. It’s easy as pie – if not slightly easier. Just follow our handy illustrated instructions.
You’ll need the following ingredients to make the biscuits:
125g margarine (or softened butter)
175g sieved plain flour
85g brown sugar
55g caster sugar
An egg
1 tsp baking powder
You’ll also be needing some equipment. It’s all pretty obvious really, isn’t it? Mixing bowl and oven tray are the essentials.
Chuck all the ingredients into the mixing bowl (via the sieve for the flour) and beat it with a wooden spoon. If you have some sort of electrical mixing whizziwig that can save your arm some aching, we strongly recommend you use it at this point.
When your mixture looks a little something like this, then you can stop. Taste it at this point too, it’s pretty nice.
Wrap the mixture up in some cling film and pop it in the fridge and leave it there overnight if you can. If you’re making these on Christmas Eve, you don’t have the time. In which case, don’t bother trying to roll the dough out, it’ll just make a big gooey mess. You wouldn’t catch us making a mess like that…
When it comes to rolling out your dough, these are the bits and pieces you’ll need.
This may look like a mess, but it’s actually a highly professional and legitimate baking method. You need to spread the flour around so your dough doesn’t stick to the counter or the rolling pin.
Now is also a good time to grease the baking tray (using margarine) and pop the oven on to preheat (190 degrees).
You’ll notice we’ve skipped straight to the oven. This is in no way related to the mess we definitely didn’t make when rolling out the dough.
If you do find yourself in a pickle like that, just spoon a teaspoon’s-worth of mixture per cookie straight on to the baking sheet, and use a spatula to shape each one into a rough square.
Make sure you leave a bit of space between each cookie as they’ll spread slightly as they cook.
Pop them in the oven on the middle shelf for about 10 to 12 minutes, but keep a close eye on them.
Mmm, looking tasty.
Once they’re a nice golden-brown colour, take the cookies out of the oven and let them cool. Don’t try and ice them when they’re still warm, that’s an exceptionally poor plan. We don’t know why, but that’s what my mum told us.
Now for the fiddly but fun part – the icing.
You’ll need some coloured icing (we recommend ready-made – we’re big Dr Oetker fans here, as you may be able to tell), some white icing and some icing pens. Though if you like a challenge, you could use solely Hundreds and Thousands to illustrate your apps. Good luck with that.
The icing sugar (in the pot with the black lid) is to stop your icing from sticking to the chopping board when you roll it out. It is essential, as you will discover.
You need to warm the icing up before you can roll it out, so get stuck in and have a good play. It’s just like plasticine, but tastes nicer. Use your cookies as a size guide and follow the patterns of the apps you’ve decided to make.
Use anything you have lying around to make the shapes you need (within reason – and clean them well first, obviously). We had a teaspoon and a butter knife, and couldn’t help wishing for Playdoh tools.
The messages app is one of the easier ones – just roll out some green icing and cut out a square to fit on the cookie. Then roll out some white icing and cut out the speech bubble. Easy job.
Stick everything down using very small amounts of the jam.
To make your iPhone tray, simply print out an A4 image of an iPhone and mount it on some sturdy cardboard.
Cut out the cardboard iPhone tray using a craft knife (kids, definitely get an adult to help you with this bit – oh, and the oven bit…).
The writing icing is very handy for the more fiddly apps, like the photos icon.
And… tadaaaa! The finished product – app cookies on an iPhone tray, just for Santa.
We chose some of our favourite apps, including Skype and Spotify (although you should be able to tell from the pictures. We’ll be very sad if you can’t).
Looks good enough to eat.
It takes quite a lot of work, but we think it’s definitely worth it for Santa. Good one, us.
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