Longest Night Cookies

Celebrate the longest night of the year with these naturally colored shortbread cookies. You can skip the spruce needle powder if you don’t want to deal with it and they will still be delicious, but it is a nice touch. These are gluten free cookies, if you prefer a gluten full version, use your favorite shortbread recipe and add the blue butterfly pea powder and the spruce powder with the dry ingredients.

Ingredients:

Cookies:

• 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• ¾ cup powdered sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 large egg yolks
• 105 g oat flour
• 105 g sorghum flour
• 80 g sweet white rice flour (mochiko) 
• 80 g tapioca starch
• 1-2 TBS blue butterfly pea powder
• 1 tsp powdered dry spruce needles (optional, powder in a coffee grinder) 
• 1 tsp gray salt

Galaxy Icing:

• 1/4 cup meringue powder
• 1/2 cup cold water
• 4- 4 ¼ cups powdered sugar 
• black tahini
• blue butterfly pea powder
• beet powder
• ube powder
• matcha powder
• edible star glitter

Method:

Make the cookies: 

Beat the butter, sugar and vanilla on medium in the bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle attachment until creamy and lighter, about two minutes. Add the egg yolks and beat again until smooth, scraping the sides as needed.

Whisk together teh dry ingredients in a bowl. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the mixer and beat until well combined and a dough comes together. 

Scrape the dough into a piece of parchment or wax paper and shape into a 1 ½ -2 inch log. Wrap it tightly and then refrigerate until set, several hours to overnight. In the first 30 minutes or so take it out and roll it once or twice so that it doesn’t have a flat side. 

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line two baking sheets with parchment.

Slice the chilled log into 3/8“ slices and place them on baking the sheets.

Bake for 12-14 minutes until the edges begin to brown. (Which will be hard to see because they are dark blue so keep a close eye on them.) Err on the side of a little too soft as they will crisp up a bit after you take them out of the oven. Let them cool on the sheet until they firm up enough to move- around 10 minutes. 

Cool thoroughly on a wire rack.  

Make the galaxy icing: 

Beat the water and meringue powder in a mixer until it holds peaks. Sift in the powdered sugar and continue to beat until you have a stiff glossy icing. 

Divide the icing into 5 bowls (use less if you aren’t using all the colors) with one being the main “dipping bowl.” The icing in this larger bowl should remain white. Tint the other smaller bowls with the black tahini, blue butterfly pea powder, beet powder, ube powder, and matcha powder. Start with around a teaspoon of color and adjust to your taste. Alternatively you could use food coloring if you prefer. 

Drip each color into the white dipping bowl one at a time. It doesn’t really matter how you do it and it can be pretty haphazard. Take one of the cooled cookies and dip in halfway in twisting a little as you pull it out. Let some of the excess drip off and then place on parchment. Sprinkle with edible star glitter.

Allow to dry and then store in an airtight container. 

*All of the color powders will be expensive to buy all at once if you don’t use them for other things, so if you don’t think they’ll be of use just use food color instead. 

**Meringue powder on the other hand is infinitely useful and if you’ve never made royal icing this way I cannot recommend it enough.