Butter Cookies with Chocolate Leaves

Time for the jingle bells and celebrations.. Its that time of the year when the whole world is celebrating. Its the time for festive cooking. This year lets gear up and give our friends and family home made gifts from our kitchen. How about butter cookies with a twist? Butter cookies with chocolate leaves.

Ingredients
Recipe adapted from here

For the cookie dough:
All purpose flour - 400 g
Sugar - 125 g
Butter - 200 g (I used unsalted cold butter)
Egg - 1
Salt - 1/4 tsp

For the chocolate leaves
Dark chocolate - 200 g
fresh rose leaves

METHOD

Preheat oven to 180 degree C for 15 minutes.

Chop the butter into cubes.

In a mixing bowl, mix all the ingredients and knead it to form a ball.

Divide it into 3 portions and knead again.

Place one roll at a time on butter paper/ parchment paper and roll it out to a thickness of 0.3cm.

Pile each flattened dough in between parchment papers and freeze for 30 minutes.

Remove from freezer and cut out the dough using cookie cutters of your choice.

Place it on a baking sheet lined with parchment and freeze again for 15 minutes.

Bake for 10 - 15 minutes or until it is just browned at the edges. (I baked it for 20 minutes).

Transfer it to a cooling rack.

Now to make chocolate leaves wash and pat dry rose leaves preferably small ones.

Melt chocolate using a double boiler method or in a microwave.

Using a small paint brush, paint the back of the leaves with chocolate. It has to be a thick even layer.

Place it slowly on a baking sheet and freeze for 60 minutes.

Remove from freezer and gently peel out the leaves.

Use melted and cooled chocolate to fix the leaves on to the cookies and place in the refrigerator until set.

Tips:

Always preheat the oven before baking.

If you freeze the cookies after cutting it out they don't lose shape.

While cutting out leaves, leave a part of the stem too so that it is easier to hold and paint the leaf with chocolate.

Place the chocolate leaves on the cookie only after the cookie has cooled down.