With Spring almost here, and Easter around the corner, we thought we’d rustle up some rabbit cookies – or bunny biscuits as we’ve named them! It was a great introduction for 9yo to practice his royal icing piping, and ‘flooding in’ – we learnt a LOT about icing technique!

There are LOADS of bunny cookie cutters around at the moment, we had one which was my Mum’s and for the tail you could use a flower cutter, or a small circle…

We used up some royal icing which had been in the fridge for a couple of days, and we have some TOP TIPS for you about this…see below!

Ingredients:

50g fairtrade caster sugar
100g butter
175g plain flour

Method:

Heat the oven to 150 degrees C (300 F, Gas mark 2)
Cream the caster sugar and the butter together, slowly adding the flour, mixing together to form a dough, I find we need to add a couple of drops of water, knead together to form a ball.

Roll out the dough, on a floured surface, to about 4mm thick.
Using your bunny shaped cutter, cut the dough, and place your bunnies and tails on a lightly floured baking tray, and bake for about 20 minutes, until golden brown. (feel free to make some spare rabbit tails… to munch on whilst you’re icing the rabbit cookies!)

As they cool down, you can make your royal icing (recipe here). Or if you are using some icing which you have been keeping in the fridge, as we were, TOP TIP make sure you really really stir the royal icing to get ALL of the lumps out, otherwise it sticks in the piping bag – and clogs the nozzle so that when you are piping the outline it stutters out, and the line will be all wobbly… 9yo wanted a pale brown bunny, so we mixed in his favourite hot chocolate mix, into a portion of the white royal icing and some more Fairtrade icing sugar, so that it’s quite thick to pipe the outlines. When this outline is dry, you add a drop of water to the remaining brown mixture, so that you can spoon it into the outline, and using a cocktail stick, gently ‘flood’ the biscuit, and prick any little bubble that appear.

Pop the ‘tail’ into position whilst the ‘flood in’ icing on the rabbit cookie is still wet, and pipe on the remaining white royal icing to make a fluffy tail!

For more Spring baking ideas, check out the daffodil cookies here and if you are after some more rabbit crafts have a look at my denim pocket purse with leaping rabbits here (FREE printable) – and watch our latest google+ hangout hosted by Maggy at Redtedart featuring Anthea, Lizzie, myself and Kelly – a great selection of Bunny Crafts!

For easy to follow instructions on how to make a little gift box from a paper plate, perfect for these cookies, please click here.

Ali also blogs over on aGreenerLifeforus.com and is a new lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello!