SMARTIE COOKIES....

"I am still convinced that a good, simple, homemade cookie is preferable to all the store-bought cookies one can find."

James Beard

SMARTIE COOKIES

I call these 'Smartie Cookies' because I once had many bags of Smarties on hand and didn't know what to do with them. So decided to decorate some cookies with them for my son's birthday...this was many years ago. Since they were a HUGE hit, I've always included them on the menu at kids parties. Its such fun to see little hands grabbing at them like there's no tomorrow!! Smarties can be substituted with M 'n' M's.

Ingredients:
Butter – ¾ cup (room temp)
Castor Sugar- 1 cup (I grind sugar crystals in my coffee grinder)
Egg – 1 / beaten
Flour – 2 ½ cups
Salt – 1 pinch
Almond Essence/Extract – 1 tsp
Vanilla Essence/Extract – 1 tsp

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 190deg C. Keep 5-6 ungreased cookie sheets on hand.
• Beat the butter and sugar till fluffy and light.
• Add the salt + vanilla essence + almond essence and beat for 30 seconds.
• With a spatula mix in the beaten egg.
• Put in all the flour in one go, and gather together to make a firm dough.
• Chill for at least 30 minutes in wrap.
• Roll out to ¼ inch thickness and cut with assorted cookie cutters.
• Decorate with Smarties (or M ‘n’ M’s), and silver dragees if desired.
• Bake on ungreased cookie sheets for 12-14 minutes, watching closely so that they don’t get too brown.
• Remove from oven; let the cookies lay on the sheet for a minute. Remove to racks to cool.
• This recipe makes approximately 8-9 dozen 1 ½” small cookies.

Note: You can flavour these with any other extract of your choice; or just leave them plain vanilla if you like. I think orange and lemon may work well with these, though I haven’t tried it myself.
Keep an eye on the cookies towards the end of the baking time. If you find a couple browning before others, remove them from the sheet onto cookie rack, and return remaining cookies on sheet to the oven.