Chocolate Shortbread Easter Cookies

Baking date: March 26, 2016

For Easter this year, we were invited to my mom and dad’s house for dinner. I was on dessert detail, of course.

I have an uncle who can not eat eggs, so desserts are always made with an eye toward something he can enjoy. I usually go with shortbread cookies, but wanted something a bit different this year.

I had found a recipe on Pinterest for chocolate shortbread cookies and wanted to decorate them with royal icing. But the problem with royal icing is the egg whites or meringue powder. So I found a recipe on Pinterest for non-egg white/meringue powder royal icing — I was set!  (Baker’s note: This version of royal icing takes a bit longer to set than if you use egg whites or meringue powder).

I used the Wilton Peeps cookie cutters to make the bunny cookies. They were topped with tinted royal icing (pink and violet). Once they were iced, I dipped the cookies in purple or pink sugar sprinkles. I added the eyes/noses with royal icing tinted black. Here are the bunnies:

This is what happens when you don’t know where the eyes and nose go at first (that pink bunny — oops!):

And here are the chicks, topped with royal icing tinted golden yellow and then dipped in yellow sugar sprinkles, with a dot of black tinted royal icing for the eye:

I used an egg-shaped cookie cutter for the Easter egg cookies, and decorated each one with a unique design using royal icing, sugar pearls, and sprinkles. I left some of the royal icing white, used the pink, purple, and yellow from the chicks and added neon green.

Here are all the decorated Easter egg cookies (royal icing is messy!):

Here are the decorated cookies up close:

Everyone liked that the sweetness of the royal icing was a great compliment to the chocolate shortbread.

So that leaves us with only one question left unanswered…which came first?