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Having very little hand-eye coordination and a Mum that refused to buy us a gaming console, PacMan was my game of choice during my tween-age years. I had wanted to make PacMan cookies for years but never found the cutters anywhere – I contemplated my options – using an upside down tulip cutter, getting cutters made, and in the end filed it in the ‘stuff to order from obscure online store’ basket. So when my lovely friend Nat showed up with these one Friday evening, I couldn’t have been more thrilled! I could barely contain myself, but it was a whole week before I could bake them.
When I’d finally gotten around to making these it was 1am, after our dinner guests had left – but I had been looking forward to these all week so a late night wasn’t going to put me off. My poor, long-suffering and ever-patient partner just about lost it when I asked him to weigh in on the ratio of PacMan to Ghosts discussion ‘Does each PacMan have one ghost, or one of each colour ghost?’, ‘You know when PacMan eats the yellow dot and the ghosts turn blue – should I make those too?’ Response was something along the lines of *mumble mumble* ‘gonna go sneep’
Now, it’s killing me to put these pictures up because they’re not quite perfect. But they’re too cute not to share, so here goes… I will make these again and put up proper photos.
These are a rather nice, soft, brownie-like cookie – I must admit I didn’t love them at first, but they grew on me – just make sure you don’t overbake them.
Chocolate Sugar Cookies
Makes a lot of cookies, how many will depend on the size of the cutter you use
Recipe from smitten kitchen
3 cups flour
½ tsp salt
¾ tsp baking powder
225g butter, softened
1 ½ cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup cocoa
- Preheat oven to 180C.
- Whisk flour, salt and baking powder in bowl and set aside.
- Mix butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and cocoa in mixer. Gradually add flour mixture, and mix until smooth.
- Roll out cookie dough onto a floured counter. I find about 1/8inch works well. Cut into desired shapes.
- Put cookie cut outs onto a greased baking tray, leaving room for them to expand (they only expand slightly). Pop the tray into the freezer for about 5 minutes so that they firm up.
- Bake for 7-9 minutes – not more, or they’ll be rock hard. Remember, cookies firm up as they cool.
- Cool on a wire rack and pipe on royal icing – use egg white powder rather than raw egg whites.
Tips for choc sugar cookies:
- Do not chill the dough after making as the original recipe suggests, as it makes it crumbly and almost impossible to roll out.
- Briefly freeze the cookie cut outs before baking, approx 5 minutes – it helps them to hold their shape better.
- These cookies taste better after being left out to soften for a few hours.