If you have kiddies in the house, they’ll love to help with making these.
Ingredients for the cookie dough
Cream butter and sugar. Add egg and blend well. Add extracts and blend. Mix flour and salt and gradually add. Cover dough with cling film and chill dough for about 2 hours. Don’t skip this. You must chill the dough. Working with about 1/3 of the batch at a time, briefly knead the chilled dough and roll about 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch thick. Cut out shapes. Bake cookies on parchment paper-lined baking trays at 190C/gas mark 5 for 12-14 minutes. Thicker cookies may need up to 20 minutes. Just watch for edges that are nicely golden. Leave to cool on a wire rack.
Ingredients for Royal Icing
2 egg whites
500g icing sugar
1 Tbsp lemon juice
Beat the egg whites lightly and add the lemon juice. Add the icing sugar, a few tablespoons at a time, beating well after each addition. You want a nice thick consistency as you need to pipe it.
Put an amount if the icing into four different bowls and add a different colour to each, mixing well. Decorate your sticks with whatever pattern’s you like, dots, squiggles, swirls, then add the eye’s. Put a small dot of icing where you want the eye’s then push on either Mini Smarties or coloured sugar balls.
