Adventures in Sugarland: Triple Rose Lemon Polenta Cookies

We have a little tradition at work, where we bring cakes in on our Birthday to share with the other members of our team. Persoanlly, I have always thought that this is a bit backwards and that people should be buying cake for me on my Birthday, but, you know how it is, you go with the flow.

One of my colleagues in another team, brought in some very delicious home baked cakes, I managed to sneakily blag one via one of my friends who is in her team. These cakes were lemon, polenta and blueberry. Well, you know what, these were some of the most delicious cakes I have ever tasted, so obviously I immediately confessed to having snuck one of her cakes and very politely asked for the recipe and this was produced the following day.

I have baked the recipe for the lemon, polenta and blueberry cake twice now, I to develop and perfect a variation on the frosting for these, to make it both delicious and pipe - able before I can share those with you ...

I was however, inspired by the lemon, polenta and blueberry cakes to make some lemon polenta cookies. I used a variation of my simple sugar cookie recipe with lemon flavouring added and about a third of the flour replaced by polenta. The polenta gives the cookies a beautiful colour as well as a lovely crunch. Depending on what is in you cupboard or fridge, you can either use lemon zest for flavouring or a teaspoon or so from a bottle of lemon flavouring

Recipe

200g / 8oz butter or block margarine

200g / 8oz caster / superfine sugar

zest of 1 lemon or 1 teaspoon of lemon flavouring

1 egg

125g / 5oz quick cook polenta (corn meal)

275g / 11oz plain flour

Mix the polenta / corn meal into the flour then make and bake as per these sugar cookies

Decoration

Equipment

Rose cupcake topper mould (I used one from Karen Davies)

Modelling paste

Petal Shaped Cookie cutter

Petal dust. (I used Primrose, Lemon Ice and Spring Green all by Sugarflair)

Couple of clean paintbrushes

Edible glue or piping gel

This is the lovely mould that I used from Karen Davies. This mould is intended to be a cupcake topper, Karen shows you how to use it herself here.

You can either mould a the full circle in the mould and then cut out the shape with a petal shaped cutter, or just mould the roses in the centre and cut out a flat petal shape from rolled fondant. I used the latter method.

What a difference a little modelling paste makes

You can use ordinary fondant for making these moulds, modelling fondant gives a much crisper and more detailed finish. Modelling paste is fondant or sugar paste that has had "stuff" added to it to make it stretchier and less sticky. You can also get sugar flower paste, this has about twice as much of the "stuff" added to it which is why you can made modelling paste by mixing ordinary fondant and sugar flower paste. For a very finely detailed mould, you can also use sugar flower paste for moulding, be aware that sugar flower paste can dry rather hard and may not be that nice to eat.

If you can't get hold of modelling or sugar flower paste, you can get better results by freezing the fondant in the mould.

This mould has been made with ordinary fondant or sugar paste

This mould has been made with modelling paste. (I used one by Squires Kitchen)

What a difference a little petal dust and lustre makes

I started by painting the leaves in Spring Green, then the centre of the roses with the Primrose colour and finally brushed all over the roses with the Lemon Ice