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This week, we’ve been chatting with Suzanne Peters; fashionista, mummy blogger and founder of Kid Style Junkie – the ultimate website for style conscious parents.
In her own words, Suzanne’s mission is to ‘rid the world of twee unsightly things!’ Her blog is dedicated to delivering readers a round up of the best fashion, food and design inspiration for families with young children. We’re big fans here at Trunki, so we wanted to see what she thought of our new little Benny the cat Trunki. Well, guess what… she baked us a whole batch of beautifully designed little cookies modeled on his face!
Check out her post below on how to make your very own Benny the Cat biscuits!
At Kid Style Junkie – we’re suckers for all things stylish for kids age 0-10Y. So when Trunki told us they were launching a new Trunki case called Benny the Cat – we decided to bake something stylish to celebrate.
Now I am neither a cat person, nor a master baker (frankly not any type of baker actually) – yet somehow this inspiration has seemingly turned me into a bit of both! Check it…
Yes – I am rather chuffed with myself. And with my step by step tutorial you can join me in smug-baker world!
Let us get down to baking business.
You Will Need:
- 225g unsalted butter (room temp please!)
- 175g icing sugar
- 1 egg (room temp please!)
- 2tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 420g plain four
- Cat shaped cookie cutter £1.49 Yolli
Do this:
- Cream the butter and sugar together.
- Add the vanilla extract and eggs and mix well (I did this in a mixer – although using arm power is better for batwing issues! Think arm flab arm flab!!)
- Sift the flour, salt and baking powder. Add it to the wet mixture little by little until well mixed.
- Pick up your mixture, knead it into a ball.
- Dust a surface with icing sugar – I stuck some baking parchment onto my surface to roll on and dusted that with the icing sugar. Do whatever floats your rolling boat.
- Roll out the mixture to around 4mm thickness and use the cookie cutter to cut the shapes.
- Lift shapes onto your parchment lined baking tray using a spatula.
- Bake your cookies on 200C/180C (fan) for 7 mins. They should NOT brown – you’re aiming for them to look dry rather than shiny. You may find it takes less time – I would check from 6 mins onwards!
- Remove the cookies and put them on a wire rack to cool.
- Once completely cool – they are ready to decorate. If it works better for you – at this stage you can store them in an airtight container for a couple of days until you have time to decorate.
TA DAAAAAA!
And breathe. Now, let’s decorate!
Get This:
- Ready to roll icing in colours of your choice from £1.39 Yolli
- Sugar sprinkles £2.75 Cakes Cookies and Crafts
- Pink dragees £2.99 Cakes Cookies and Crafts
- Small chocolate beans Hobbycraft £1.50. Separate out the blue ones into an egg-cup or small bowl
- Edible ink pen £1.50 Cakes Cookies and Crafts
- Black writing icing £2 Hobbycraft
- Mini circle cookie cutter – part of a set £11.52 Amazon
- A bowl with icing sugar mixed with a touch of water (should be consistency of toothpaste) – this will be your glue
- Baking parchment
- Rolling Pin
Do This:
- Choose your base colour and open the ready to roll icing in that colour. I found it best to do this is small batches on greaseproof paper that was stuck down and lightly sprinkled with icing sugar.
- Roll the icing to around 3mm thickness and use the cat cookie cutter to cut out the icing shapes.
- Spread a small amount of icing ‘glue’ on the face of the cookie and stick the cut out icing on top. If necessary use the rolling pin to roll it gently across the cookie to spread the icing to all the edges.
- Repeat this step until you have covered all the cookies you want to use and all the colours you want to use. Give the icing a couple of minutes to stick.
- Pick four cookies of the same colour to work on like a mini production line.
- Place the four cookies on onto a plate and dip your finger in the icing ‘glue’ and paint with it to fill the triangle of the ears.
- Sprinkle the sprinkles generously over the ears of the cats so they stick to the glue and shake the remainder off. Only use one colour sprinkle at a time as once you’re done with this you can take the cookies off the plate and using a funnel drop the left-over sprinkles from the plate back into their packaging to minimise waste.
- Roll out the white icing and using the small circular cutter – cut out enough holes for the nose of all the cats you are planning to make.
- Dip your finger in the icing ‘glue’ and paint a small amount on to the underside of the white icing nose and then stick the nose to the middle of the cats face. Give the icing a couple of minutes to stick.
- Apply a pink dragee (small round sprinkle) around 1/3 of the way down the nose circle. Make sure it is centered. This will be the nose.
- Use the edible ink writing pen to draw the cats mouth onto the circular nose bit starting from just under the pink dragee.
- Dab a tiny amount of icing glue onto the underside of each of the small blue smarties and apply them to either side of the icing nose.
- Use the edible ink writing pen to draw whiskers onto the main part of the icing.
- Last but not least use the black writing icing (on larger ones you will need to buy separate nozzles to get a small enough opening) to blob on the pupils of the cats eyes. Use a toothpick if necessary to smooth out the pupil.
- Leave to dry.
- Look at your creation and feel SO SMUG at your baking brilliance.
- Let your kids stuff them into their little mouths and then run around the room on a crazy sugar high!
I might add this decoration is not purely the domain of adults – check these that my kids made ALL by themselves.
Now I’m not going to lie to you – to make these cookies was hard work – but the feeling you get after baking is way better than the feeling you get after exercise! I’ll choose that any day!
Cat Trunki is available to buy at Trunki for £39.99/$60.66. Click here for the UK shop and click here for the US shop. Style is available FREE at Kid Style Junkie! Get busy…
