St. Patrick’s Day Wafer Paper Cookies

I found these great wafer paper’s on the Fancy Flours blog and thought they’d be a great idea for St Patrick’s Day. I admit, the thought of making rolled sugar cookies made my skin crawl. But I sucked it up and got out my mixer. The recipe from Fancy Flours website says “No Fail Sugar Cookies”, so I thought I’d give it a try. Well I must say, they’re not kidding, by “no fail”! Making the dough was easy, and rolling out the dough was just as easy! And re-rolling the scraps was just as easy. The cookie after baking was very crispy and very tasty. My only glitch in this recipe was icing the cookies. The recipe said to ice with any icing, so I initially used frosting that I frost cakes with. Wrong! You have to use Royal icing that dries hard. When the icing is completely hard, then you can proceed to put the wafer paper images on the cookie. The end result was a cookie that literally looked too good to eat. The cookie itself was very crisp, buttery and delicious.

Wafer Paper Sugar Cookies

Cookies:

6 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups unsalted butter
2 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream sugar and butter until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix dry ingredients in separate bowl and add to butter mixture. Mix well.
Put a handful of the freshly made dough between two sheets of parchment paper and roll to desired thickness. Repeat with the rest of the dough. Put the rolled dough, including the parchment paper, on a cookie sheet and refrigerate for 10 minutes or longer. Your dough will be chilled and ready to cut and bake with no wait and no added flour! Repeat with scraps after cutting cookies.
Bake at 350 degrees for 8 -10 minutes. Let cool.

Recipe makes 8 dozen 3″ cookies.

Royal Icing:

Recipe using egg whites:

3 1/4 cups (or more) confectioners sugar, sifted
2 large egg whites
1 teaspoon strained fresh lemon juice

Beat the egg whites with the lemon juice with your electric or hand mixer, until combined. Add the sifted confectioners sugar and beat on low until combined and smooth. The icing needs to be used immediately or transferred to an airtight container, as royal icing hardens when exposed to air. Cover with plastic wrap when not in use.

Recipe using Meringue Powder:

For those that choose not to use raw egg whites, this meringue powder recipe can be used. It is not as tasty as the egg white version, therefore extract is used.

4 c. confectioners sugar
3 Tbsp Meringue powder
1/2 tsp flavored extract
1/2-3/4 c. warm water

Beat with electric or hand mixer, confectioners sugar and meringue powder. Add water and extract until desired consistency.

Assembling Cookies:

Ice cookies with royal icing and let dry completely (this can take several hours or even overnight). When cookies are dry, cut out design from wafer paper, and apply a thin coat of light corn syrup to the reverse side of design. Apply to cookie. Place design side down on a piece of parchment paper for about 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, turn upright and dry thoroughly. You may decorate with sparkles using clear piping gel.

 

FoodieNote:

Make sure to use royal icing or other icing that gets hard when dry. My first attempt I used regular icing, and transfers didn’t melt the paper-like texture.