Hello, all! Did you forget about us? It's been a while, but I have something new for you! I had intended to make these at the same time as the
Crystal Star Cupcakes, but I forgot how easily-distracted I get when baking. So, they've been postponed until now. What are "they", you ask? Why, they're
Broochies, of course!
"Brooch Cookies" - easy-to-make sugar cookies based on Usagi's first brooch!
Kids really like "smiley face" cookies, biscuits with candy stuck to the icing arranged in the shape of a face. They get to pick the sweets off and eat them first, and then have a cookie afterwards as well. These "Broochies" have the same idea, just with a
Sailor Moon twist!
Here's a reference photo, just in case you forgot what it looks like.They're obviously nowhere near as complicated as the Crystal Star Cupcakes, but they still produce a really cute effect. They're also great for getting kids involved with decorating! Maybe after you show them how to make a "proper" cookie, you can let them design their own "Sailor brooch" with a wide variety of different candy colours and shapes!
As you can see, there are two different kinds of "Broochie"; like the cupcakes, one is better looking, and the other is tastier/easier. The "Pretty" kind of Broochie is made with a strawberry
Mentos "mint" and cachous (little shiny balls made of sugar) around the edge. The "Tasty" kind is made with half a pink marshmallow instead of the Mentos, and large plain sprinkles around the edge. Cachous are more of a torture than a treat - like cake fondant, they are edible, but rarely eaten. Likewise, Mentos can take a bit of chewing to eat, whereas marshmallows... well, you know, they're hella soft. So if you're making Broochies for kids, it's probably better to pick the "Tasty" kind - but if you're preparing them for people old enough to handle cachous and hard candy, the "Pretty" kind just looks a lot nicer.
What you'll need (in addition to the ingredients for your preferred sugar cookie + royal icing recipes);
* A bag of soft banana lollies
* Yellow food colouring
* Large coloured "sprinkles"
OR multicoloured cachous. Make sure, whatever you pick, that it has the colours red, blue, green and yellow(/orange-ish). (Miniature M&Ms would also work very well, and might cut back on ingredients if you're also making Crystal Star Cupcakes.)
* Small, round, chewy, light pink candy (I recommend Mentos)
OR pink marshmallows
* An appropriately-sized glass (read below)
If you have a sugar cookie (or any other suitable kind of cookie, really) recipe that you trust and know makes nice, flat, round cookies that hold their shape, then go ahead and use that one. If you don't have a recipe,
here's the one that I used (although they
may arrest us for using it outside of December). It also has a recipe for royal icing (which also holds its shape, and doesn't drip). Regular icing would leave a nice shiny finish, however, so if you want to use that instead, feel free.
Whatever cookie recipe you use,
remember to add plenty of yellow food colouring; Usagi's brooch is yellow, and we want the biscuit to be, too!
After you've prepared the dough and it's setting in the fridge, now is a good time to find the right size glass to cut out your biscuit shapes.
Take one of the banana candies, and (making sure you've thoroughly washed your hands) bend it slightly so that it looks more like a crescent moon. Then take either your pink candy (I really wish I could've found a gummy candy that was the right size/shape/colour - that would be perfect!) or a marshmallow, and arrange the two pieces together on a plate like the design of the brooch. Then, find a glass that goes around both of these pieces of candy leaving about an inch of space at the edge.
When your dough has finished setting, roll it out and use the glass you picked to cut out the shapes of the cookies, then bake as per recipe. (Obviously, if your recipe makes your cookies spread a little bit, choose a glass slightly smaller than you want.) Make the royal icing, adding more yellow food colouring.
When your biscuits have cooled, take the yellow icing and gently ice a cookie so that it doesn't go right to the edge - the gap between biscuit and icing will imitate the "ridge" of the brooch. Now, take either your cachous or your sprinkles and arrange them so that they look like the circles on the edge of the brooch. Clockwise from the top, it's red, yellow(/orange), blue, green. If you're able, place them on the very edge of the icing circle, then roll/drag them more towards the edge so that they sit on the "ridge", whilst still being held in place with the icing. If not, just leave them wherever.
Then put your curved banana lolly in the middle of the cookie, where the moon is on the brooch; finally, add your pink candy, or your marshmallow, where the pink circle is. If you're using marshmallows, I suggest you cut them in half first so that they don't stand up so tall. You can cut them gently with a knife, but you don't have to be
too careful, as they spring back up quite easily.
It's best to ice, and then decorate, each cookie individually rather than ice them all at once and then go to decorate, since the icing may set before you can put the candy in.
And there you go! Really simple, isn't it? Which one you should pick depends on who you're making them for, and really, which one you just like better.
They also keep for a long time, and since this recipe makes (approx.) 1 metric assload of cookies, they're a really good idea for school lunches.
Two Broochies made with cachous/chewy candy, and one in the middle made with sprinkles and a marshmallow.Hope you enjoyed it! It's really very simple to make and the results are just so cute to look at. Having a whole bowl full of Usagi's brooches is kind of a surreal, delicious expeience! I hope you all find the time to try it out!
festive
