Baking Adventures: Panda Cookies

So the other day, a friend linked me to this site which has a recipe and instructions for bread where each slice looks like a panda face.

I liked the idea. A lot.

But I thought: panda bread, hm not sure what to do with that. It's obviously a sweet dough too, so...

Then I thought, hey how about cookies? I want to bake cookies anyway.

So that's what I did.

I picked a recipe for German black-and-white-shortbread style cookies, which works along a similar principal to achieve a patterned effect, and simply coloured a portion of the dough with green food colouring paste (I'd meant to use matcha as in the original, but simply couldn't find any affordable stuff).

The result is looking pretty good.


But now you're probably interested in the recipe, right?



Okay, here it is:

Ingredients

1/2 vanilla pod
300g unsalted butter. softened
150g icing sugar
1 pinch of salt
400g plain flour

for the colouring:
1 tbsp cocoa powder
green food colouring

1. Slit the vanilla pod open lengthways and scrape out the seeds.

2. Cream the butter with the vanilla seeds, icing sugar and salt until well blended and fluffy.

3. Sift in the flour and knead together swiftly.


4. Divide the dough into 3 portions: 115g for the dark eyes and ears, 330g for the white face, and the rest for the green background.


5. Quickly knead the cocoa into the smallest portion of dough, then form it into a ball and wrap in cling film.

6. Work the green food colouring into the largest portion of dough until you're satisfied with the colour, then also form a ball and wrap in cling film.

7. Wrap the plain dough in cling film as well and rest all three portions in the fridge for at least an hour until chilled through.


8. Once the dough is chilled comes the complicated part. Making the panda face. It is best here to refer to the original site, and I used the following amounts of dough for the different parts:

• Just under half the plain dough for the face, 2/3rds of the dark dough for the eyes.
• A good 3rd of the left over plain dough for the hollow between the eyes, and the rest of it to frame the face.
• The rest (1/3rd) of the dark dough for the ears.
• 1/4 of the green dough for the hollow betwene the ears, and the rest to wrap around everything (more or less).

9. Once you have assembled your logs (it might be easier to do two shorter strands), wrap in clingfilm again and chill for another 30-60 minutes.


10. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F, slice cookies off the log (about 4-5mm/1/4 inch thick) and place on a lined baking tray.


11. Bake for 10-14 minutes, making sure the edges don't brown too much, as it will spoil the pattern.


12. Let cool on a rack and enjoy!