Orange and Apricot 'Peach Cookies'
Delicious summery cookies disguised as cookies - a little fiddly to make but they're worth it!
Ingredients:
- 250g plain flour
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- Pinch of salt
- 80g icing sugar
- 1 large egg
- 100g butter (melted, but cooled)
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- Zest of half an orange
- 200g apricot jam
- Red and yellow food colourings
- 100ml peach (or apple) juice
- 50g caster sugar
- Mint leaves
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 160 C (fan)
- In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt, and move to one side.
- In another bowl, whisk together the egg and icing sugar until thicker and pale - this will take a few minutes with an electric whisk.
- Add the melted butter, vanilla essence and orange zest and mix again.
- Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, and mix together until thoroughly combined.
- Roll the dough into 40g balls, and place on a baking tray, flattening very slightly. You don't want the dough to be too flat as you want domed cookies to create the sides of the peaches.
- Bake for around 12-14 minutes, until just browning on the outside, and allow to cool.
- Using a teaspoon, very carefully scoop out the middle of the cookies, ensuring that you leave space around the edges.
- Transfer the apricot jam to a piping bag, and snip the end off. Pipe a walnut sized amount of jam into the centre of each cookie, and connect two cookies together to create each peach.
- Wipe any excess jam off the sides, and then pop the cookied into the fridge to help them firm up for about 10 minutes.
- Meanwhile, prep the food colouring. Pour the peach juice into two small bowls - one with some red food colouring, one with yellow food colouring.
- With each peach, lightly brush the coloured juice onto the peach with a pastry brush to create the orange and red colourings of an acutal peach. Try not to add too much juice to the cookies as this will make them too wet. If you require more colour, add more food colouring to the juice.
- Repeat with all of the peaches, and leave them for a few minutes so that the surfaces of the cookies can dry slightly.
- Roll each peach into a bowl with the caster sugar inside, so that it sticks to the outside of the peaches and looks like peach fuzz. Brush off any excess.
- Place a mint leaf on each peach for the stalk and leaf to finish off the look and enjoy!
For a video on how to make these, head to my Instagram highlights @alice.fevronia, and if you give them a go, please tag me as I'd love to see!
