Buttercream Easter Cookies

Everyone likes treats at Easter. Lots of chocolate eggs, perhaps a lovely roast dinner, cake, pie, cookies, the list is endless!

My son loves Easter egg hunts. For a number of years I have filled little plastic eggs with pocket money toys, stickers, bubbles while also hiding the assorted eggs and other goodies he receives from friends and family. This year has got to be the hardest I have ever had in finding him things for the hunt. He is in the tween age. Some of the pocket money toys just seem too young or uninteresting to him now. This means that the things he is interested in become that much more expensive! I prefer to use Easter for token gifts rather than another birthday or Christmas! He does still like the cute and his favourite animal is a hedgehog but I couldn't find any of those either! I managed perfectly well on the chocolate front! I think that the things I have found will be appreciated and he will still have fun Easter Sunday! Fingers crossed!

I rarely make cakes or cookies for Easter as I have birthdays slap bang in the way! So we have birthday cake and what with all the chocolate, an Easter cake or cookies is just a no no! However, if you enjoy making some treats for your dinner guests or just because it is Easter, you may like these buttercream cookies I made.

I made some of the shortbread cookies I shared here. This time I added a teaspoon of lemon extract to the dough as that seemed a more Easter flavour to me! They really hold their shape which is why I like to use the recipe when making cookies to decorate. Plus they do not use any egg so great for allergy sufferers!

I used chocolate, lemon, vanilla and orange buttercream which all complemented the lemon cookies.

They didn't last long!

Freshly baked cookies! These do not spread at all in the oven, perfect for shaped cookies.

I always make more buttercream than I need for a cake as I would rather have too much than not enough. As I have made a few cakes lately, the amount of frosting in my fridge is pretty extensive! I decided rather than decorate the cookies with royal icing, I would use the buttercream instead!

Firstly I made up a small batch of Royal icing for outlining the cookies. I tinted it yellow with Wilton lemon yellow colour, used tip #2 and outlined the cookies.

I left these to dry while I gathered my supplies for decorating. This all looks nice and neat and organised, until you see what I am actually like when decorating!

Yep stuff everywhere! I have tubs full of frosting, bowls with more frostings, sprinkles, paste colours, icing bags, tips etc etc!! Organised chaos is how I like to see it!

You can frost large flat areas with buttercream. You need cornflour (cornstarch) and your finger!

Firstly, fill a piping bag with frosting and fit a large round tip (I used Wilton #12). Pipe some frosting onto your cookie.

Next you need to dip your finger in some cornflour and begin to push and flatten the frosting you have just piped. I press down and out to the edges, only occasionally adding extra frosting if needed. You will need to dip your finger a few times. The cornflour stops your finger from getting covered in frosting, and keeps the frosting where you want it, on your cookie!

The cornflour can leave residue like this but most dissappears after a while and the rest you can gently brush off.

Once you have filled in your cookie, you can go ahead and decorate it. I piped lines and zigzags onto the egg shapes and decorated with small chocolate beans.

These came from a sprinkle selection that you can purchase at Sainsburys. You could even use mini smarties or dots of icing.

For the butterfly shapes I used 3 frosting colours.

I firstly piped around the edge in pink and flattened this. I then took some yellow to create the body and head. I then filled in the remainder with blue.

I then flattened this into place.

Finally I decorated these with dots of icing, gave them a face and used the long sprinkles as antennae.

The flowers were pretty simple as I completely filled them in one colour and then decorated with the chocolate beans or frosting dots.

For the tulips, I used an edible food writer to draw lines over the buttercream to look like the petals.

For the bunny faces I did the exact same thing, covering the cookie in one colour.

I used a little pink for the ears, again flattening with cornflour. then took Wilton tip #3 and gave the bunnies their features.

When flattening buttercream, it doesn't give as smooth a finish as say royal icing, but it sure does make the cookies tasty!

They are bright and fun. You can get shaped cookie cutters from hobby shops, supermarkets and the good old web! These are from a Wilton set of 101 cookie cutters. They have been used many many times and not just for cookies!

Will you make cookies for your Easter gathering? Share on my Facebook page.

Have a great weekend!