National Cookie Day - 4th December

How to Celebrate!

National Cookie Day is a day when people come together to bake cookies.  It is a time when parents and their children have fun in the kitchen making lots of edible treats for all to enjoy and with lots of different cookie recipes to choose from the hardest part is deciding which recipe is the tastiest!

Who would not want to get together and celebrate such a fun and yummy day! 

History of the Cookie – How did it all come about?

While the origin of National Cookie Day is unknown, the history of the cookie is very interesting.  Cookies were invented during the 7^th century in Persia.  It then spread throughout Europe thanks to the Muslim conquest of Spain where the cookie would continue to march across the continent until it became one of the most eaten snack foods in Europe by the 15th Century.

The story does not stop in Europe, in the 17^th century the cookie had made its way across the Atlantic into the Americas via the Dutch settlers of the time.  Colonial housewives snatched up the concept of the cookie and began making their own using butter or if they wanted to be more elaborate rose water, maple syrup or even beer!

Source: https://bit.ly/2OGwm2c

Even today cookies are a very popular choice when it comes to baking and consuming.  We Brits ate a record breaking £3 billion in 2018 alone!

Mermaid Inspired Cookies

Why not have a go yourself! For the mermaid lovers amongst us it is the perfect opportunity to bake mermaid inspired cookies. 

To get your creative design juices flowing below is just a small selection of amazing mermaid inspired cookie designs which you could try at home:

Source: Google

To get you going why not try out this delicious recipe:

Under the Sea Cookies

Ingredients

For the cookies

• 100g butter, softened
• 75g caster sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 200g plain flour
• 1-2 tbsp milk

For the royal icing

• 15g egg white
• 455g icing sugar
• 75g water

To decorate

• Wilton® Colour Right System
• Scrumptious Sprinkles Unicorn Sprinkletti Mix or Under the Sea Sprinkletti Mix

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas 6. Lightly grease 3 baking trays. Place the butter and sugar in a bowl and cream together until light and fluffy.
2. Separate the egg yolk from the white and set the white aside. Beat in the egg yolk. Sift in the flour and mix well with enough milk to give a fairly soft dough.
3.  Knead the mixture gently on a lightly floured surface and roll out to 5mm thick. Cut into your chosen cookie shapes, place on the prepared baking trays and bake for 8-10 minutes.
4. To make the royal icing, first sieve the icing sugar into a bowl. Add the egg white and combine gently. Add the water and mix with a spoon until combined. Using an electric mixer, mix on low for up to 15 minutes until you have a nice light texture.
5. To colour your icing, first mix colours in a ramekin or small bowl, then add small amounts using a cocktail stick to achieve the colour you want – you will need approx. 2 tablespoons of royal icing to 2-3 touches from a cocktail stick. We used the following number of drops from the Wilton Colour Right System:
   Blue: 4 x blue
   Lilac: 6 x red, 2 x blue
   Jade green: 8 x blue, 4 x yellow
   Pink: 8 x red, 1 x blue, 6x pink
6. Pipe the outline on the biscuits using a disposable piping bag fitted with a piping tube.
7. When the outline has dried, let down your icing by adding a few drops of water until it has the consistency of thick yoghurt. Spoon the let-down icing into a piping bag, snip off the tip to make a very small hole and fill in the middle of your icing design. Use a small decorating brush to help spread it to the edges and remove any air bubbles. Leave to dry completely unless you’re adding sprinkles to the wet icing.

Decorating tips

Mermaid – ice the face, arms and middle first and leave to dry, then ice the rest. Add sprinkles to her tail when the icing is wet. When fully dry, paint on her face using a black edible food pen. 

Turtle – add sprinklesto the wet icing to make the shell.

Shark – pipe on the teeth and eye using white icing.

Seahorse – pipe a wavy snail trail from its head to tail and three little dots in rows on its fin. Attach tiny pearls and stars to this icing then paint on eyes.

Starfish – stick a large pearl from the sprinkles in the middle, then pipe small dots of white icing along the centre of each arm.

Source: https://bit.ly/2OYo3iz

Why not have a go yourself and send us your creations to our social media pages, we would love to see them and share with fellow mermaid lovers!

@PlanetMermaid

#planetmermaid

Visit www.planetmermaid.com to view our latest in amazing fabric mermaid tails for kids and adults, woman’s mermaid monofins, siren tails and a whole lot more!

Keep mermaiding and sharking x