Moo Moo German Butter Cookie

 

It's quite a common practice for home-bakers to bake cow or bull design butter cookies to usher the Lunar Year of Ox (2021). I joined the fun after seeing so many cute and wonderful cow or bull design butter cookies shared by my FB and IG friends. However, this is the most time consuming design I have done to date - just 17 cookies took me more than two hours to handle. Owing to my inconsistency, all the cookies have different expressions 😉

Yield: 17 x 3⌀cm cookies

Ingredients

50g unsalted butter, softened

20g icing sugar

a little salt

48g Plain flour plus/plain flour

38g potato starch

4g milk powder

some bamboo charcoal powder

some cocoa powder

red food dye

some black sesame seeds as eyes

Directions

1. Mix plain flour plus, potato starch, milk powder in a small bowl. Sieve before use.

2. Cream softened butter, icing sugar and salt in a mixing bowl till light and fluffy. Fold in the sieved flour mixture from Step 1. Combine till the mixture becomes a smooth dough.

3. You'll get about 159g of original dough.

Take about 29g of the original dough to mix with a little bamboo charcoal powder to become the black dough.

Take about 10g of original dough to mix with a little red food dye to become the pink dough.

Take about 3g of original dough to mix with a little cocoa powder to become the brown dough.

Let the dough rest for about 15 minutes before shaping.

4. Transfer the remaining original dough to a small sandwich bag. Roll into a flat dough.

Break the black dough in a small bowl into small crumbs using a fork.

Cut the plastic bag to expose the original dough. Spread about 80% of the black dough crumb over the top of the original dough.  Keep the remaining 20% black dough for shaping the ears later.

Cover the dough with the plastic sheet, and roll flat the black dough crumb to form patched pattern over the original dough.

 

Without removing the plastic sheet, use the back of a knife to divide the flat dough into 18 portions.

Each portion will have about 10 to 11g in weight. Use the 18th dough to make up for any "under-weight" dough portions. Roll the pattern dough into balls.

5. Divide the pink dough into 17 portions. Shape into oval shape and paste to the pattern dough ball. Poke two holes to resemble the nostrils.

6. Stick two black sesame seeds above the pink dough to become the eyes. 

7. Divide the brown dough into 17 portions. Shape into a pair of horns and add to the top of the shaped dough ball.

8. Use the remaining black dough to shape and add a pair of ears to the shaped dough. 

9. Arrange the shaped dough over a non-stick baking sheet or parchment paper.

Bake at middle rack of a preheated oven at 150℃ for about 18 to 20 minutes. Let the cookies stay in the oven for another 5 minutes to dry them up.

10.Let the cookies cool down over a wire rack. Enjoy these melt-in-your-mouth cookies slowly as they are painstakingly made 😍😜

If there are still leftover cookies, keep them in an air-tight container 🎁