Festive Floral Cookies

Recently, I had baked a Captain America Shield Theme fresh cream pastry cake.  In a spree to get the right colors of the whipped cream to be used for decorating the cake, I ended up with loads of bright red colored and blue colored whipped cream left over after decorating the cake.  Normally, whipped cream is used to make mousse, cream cheese cakes, dessert jars etc. apart from cake decorating.  I wanted to do something else other than these with the leftover whipped cream and found this recipe of whipped cream cookies on the internet shared by Mrs. Rajeswari Ganesh.  Also, at the same time, a contest had been announced for the festive season in one of the home bakers groups on Facebook in which I participated.   I chose do a simple rangoli style arrangement of floral theme with these cookies and was pretty happy with the outcome.

Here goes the recipe of the Whipped Cream Cookies.


Ingredients:

Whipped Cream - 120 gm

Icing Sugar - 1/2 cup

Almond Essence - 1/4 tsp

Unsalted Butter - 40 gm

Coarsely Powdered Nuts (Cashew, Almonds, Pistachios) - 1/4 cup

All Purpose Flour - 1½ cups

Baking Powder - 1/2 tsp

Salt - 1 pinch

Chopped Nuts and Saffron Strands - To decorate

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 160 degrees for 10 minutes.

Sieve together well all-purpose flour and baking powder.  Keep aside.

In a large mixing bowl, beat whipped cream and icing sugar until well combined.

Add the essence and the coarsely powdered nuts to this and mix well with a spatula.

Add the butter and beat at medium speed.

Finally, add the sifted flour and mix to form a cookie dough.  Add butter if necessary to get the right consistency of the dough.  Do not use milk or water.  Only butter is to be used to get the dough consistency to be of mashed potatoes.

Smear ghee or butter in your hands and roll small balls of the dough to form a flower shape.  Decorate with chopped nuts and saffron if desired.

Bake in a preheated oven at 160 degrees for 18-20 minutes or until the sides turn light brown.

Remove from oven and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.  It will be soft when hot and perfect when cooled.

Store in an airtight container until use.

I had used the colored whipped cream for this recipe and hence got bright red and blue colored cookies in floral shapes.  To color the whipped cream, I have used Americolor Red gel color and blue gel color.  These cookies can be done without the color effect and will appear light colored when white whipped cream is used.

To make fresh whipped cream, scoop out 1 cup of frozen non-diary whipping cream stored in the freezer and place in a bowl in the fridge for about 1 to 2 hours.  When it turns to a thick liquid consistency (some frozen chunks can also be there), transfer to a mixing bowl.  Whisk with an electric beater at medium speed for a minute and then increase to high speed and beat until soft peaks.  This may take around 5 minutes or more.   Transfer the whipped cream to an airtight container and store in fridge until use.  The mixing bowl and the beaters/whisk should be chilled prior to whipping up the cream.  An ice bath can also be used by keeping a big bowl of ice cubes underneath the mixing bowl while whipping up the cream.



This is the cake I had done on the Captain America Shield Theme.

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