We don’t reinvent much when we make biscuits, more or less all the doughs look the same, it’s then the flavoring that changes. And then also the form.
In this specific case, and a bit like in the case of small chocolate pretzelswe will mainly play on shapes and colors to have a little fun and offer little cookies that will make “wouaaah”.
Let’s go to learn how to make “candy cane” or barley sugar cookies for French speakers.
Make a very easy vegan cookie dough
My recipe is always more or less a variation of that of little spice men shared last year, which is itself a recipe that derives from my basic recipe for sweet pastry to make my pie shells.
When you have passed a CAP in pastry and worked in pastries, you finally realize that the devil is in the details (quality of ingredients, originality of a spice or a combination of flavors, rarity …) and not in the shell.
It’s ultimately like in all other craft areas: we know how to make a scented candle, but some are more successful than others thanks to the attention paid to all the string of details.
I can, of course, only advise you to go and look at this recipe for spice cookies, which I find even better, but I wanted to offer you here a version whose list of ingredients is very slightly shortened. I basically always cook with the same ingredients, and I prefer to go into too much detail than not enough.
But I realize that despite my original intention, which is to simplify by reducing the shadows, some people are a little impressed by these lists of ingredients!
For biscuits as for pie dough, I obviously advise you to use a margarine rich in fat, which holds well and has a consistency close to butter and not a soft margarine. The softer the margarine, the less crunchy cookies you will get.
Make candy cane cookies
To have a nice effect, we must start by coloring part of the dough. Me, I have no problem with food colorings, and if there are natural ones, I find them much too bland.
Beware, however, of the origin of the dyes, especially the red, which can be cochineal-based. So it’s literally dried and crushed insects. YUM.
I also advise you to use powdered coloring if possible, which is very concentrated and avoids the addition of liquid in the dough (even if it will be less serious than for a recipe like macaroons or meringue) .
You also have the option of adding cocoa powder to your dough, which will allow you, in addition to the color, to have a cocoa flavor.
To make the cookies, we are going to continue in the meditative way of cookies (before there was art therapy, now we are going to make therapy cookies, and in addition we can eat at the end, I think we are really sure of the total win), because it takes a little time to prepare this visual effect.
We will simply make sausages of the same size in two colors of dough and then twist them, then lengthen them, sealing the effect.
You can do a little what you want with the shapes, but the barley candy canes are still quite evocative of the end of the year celebrations.
Decorate with my cookies and offer them
Even if it is not the most appropriate method of preservation, you can completely decorate your tree (natural, artificial or DIY) or your table with these cookies.
They’re shaped very well for adding a ribbon, and can also be dipped in chocolate and then sprinkled with whatever fancy edible you can think of.
We may think about it a little less, but they will be the most beautiful effect if you decide to make a pretty cookie box to offer to someone around you. A nice gift to offer, more fun than something you don’t know if you’ll like, and which shows that you have put your time and intention into the gift you are giving! Even if you can also buy a ready-made gift, obviously, zero injunction here, the idea is above all to say that if like me you like to make cakes but eat them less, you can wisely combine these two passions with brilliance and performance social.
Candy cane cookies
Ingredients
- 130 g margarine very firm
- 70 g icing sugar
- 1 vs. soup cornstarch
- 60 ml water
- 320 g wheat flour t45
- 1 vs. soup almond puree
- 1/2 vs. coffee salt
- 1 vs. coffee vanilla powder or flavor of your choice
- 1 pinch red dye
- 1 vs. coffee cocoa unsweetened
Instructions
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In a salad bowl, or the bowl of your mixer equipped with the leaf tool, put all the ingredients, except the water, the cocoa and the red food coloring!
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Work well to sand, then add the water little by little. You may need to add less, or more!
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Separate the dough in two, or in 4 (finally the idea is to have half colored dough, half “natural”, after if you want to make several, try to do that in a proportional way, I decline all responsibility because I didn’t do mat sup).
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Mix the dough with the coloring / flavoring of your choice: for the coloring, put a few drops of water, for the cocoa, go ahead like that, and adjust the texture of the dough if necessary. It’s really random for me, but you may have to add a little water or flour: NOTHING dramatic, the whole thing is to have a pleasant dough to work with!
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Separate your two (or more) colors to have an identical number of candy canes, i.e. 24 for me (it gives medium-sized cookies). The simplest, once again, is to make a sausage with each color and to detail identical washers in this sausage.
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Make long sausages with your color/nature duos, then twist them, before rolling them again to incorporate the two colors together well.
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Fold the pudding thus obtained to make your candy canes and place them on a baking sheet with parchment paper.
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Then cook at 175°C for 20 minutes. Be careful, the expected cooking is rather “white” because most dyes will take on a different color on a very cooked dough.
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Then let cool completely before storing in a metal box!
