Easter Chocolate Egg Cookies

In previous posts , I shared with you my love for decorated cookies.  It became a hobby of mine since I discovered the wonderful work of experts in the field who generously share their work online.  

The downside of cookies decoration is the time it takes to finish just one, let alone a batch. That's why, I mostly do cookies like that during special occasions and holidays when I have more time on my hands. 

There are hundreds of cookie dough recipes out there and I personally experimented with several of them. For this special holiday, which is Easter, I worked on different recipes, but I will share with you in this post the chocolate sugar cookie.

 The motives I used for the decoration are inspired by Easter and spring, two occasions that celebrate birth and rejuvenation. I often get ideas from a wonderful and inspirational blogger: Amber Spiegel. I recommend that you check out her work.

For the cookie dough you need (you can get many cookies from this amount, depending on the shape):

• 1 small egg (room temperature)
• 220 g flour
• 60 g cocoa powder
• 70 brown sugar cane (ground the sugar, I use the coffee grinder to do so)
• 120 g soft unsalted butter 
• 10 g hazelnut praliné paste (optional)
• 1tsp zest of orange
• the seeds of one vanilla pod
• dash of salt

First sift the flour, cocoa powder and salt and set aside. With a paddle attachement (if you don´t have one use whisks) beat the butter for a minute, add the sugar and the praliné paste (if you used it), the orange zest and the vanilla seeds and also beat for 2 or 3 min until combined. Add the egg and beat again for just a few minutes.
Add the flour mixture, and mix just a little bit and stop even if not all the flour is combined. Drop the dough over a clean working surface and gently knead it for few minutes.

Form your well combined dough into a 2 cm thick rectangle  and wrap it with plastic film or put in a ziplock bag and leave in the fridge for at least 4 hours or over night.

Divide your dough in 2, keep one half in the fridge and roll the other into 6 mm (1/4 of an inch) thick layer. I use an adjustable rolling pin to get an even surface!

If your dough maintained its coldness you can start cutting the shapes, if not place the dough again in the fridge for about an hour.
After cutting the shapes, again you need to place the baking sheet, lined with parchment paper, and the cookies into the fridge for about 15 min.

Bake your cookies in a pre-heated oven at 180 C, for about 10 to 15 min. The baking time will depend on the size of the cookies.
Keeping  your dough chilled while working with it and before baking will make sure you have a neat and even surface with no air bubbles and the cookies will not expand or loose their shape during baking.

I decorated the cookies with royal icing using several techniques. Though the decoration  I made is a bit time consuming, you can use much simpler patterns and decorate to your liking. Even without decoration, the cookies taste great.

At the end, I want to wish everyone a Happy Easter, hoping that  you will try out this recipe to add more fun to your holiday.