Beauty is my absolute favourite thing in the world, but it does have a close second and that second is food. More specifically, cake and desserts. Laduree is basically my spiritual home. So obviously anything that manages to combine the two things is completely talking my language, and I know I'm not alone - there's a reason why macaroon inspired make up is so popular.
This obsession with cake is also one of the reasons why I love philosophy's shampoo, shower gel & bubble bath so much: apart from the fact that they're wonderfully lathery, and last for ages, they're almost always scented with something delicious that I want to eat, the recipe for which is on the front of the bottle. I only really realised this the other day when I was smelling the Frosted Cookie one (£14) (it smells amazing, by the way, kind of like calpol), and I wondered whether the recipe would actually work. So as a seasoned baker I decided to try it out!
So, first of all since the recipe is in American measurements I had to translate it all from cups to grams. For this I used Delia Online (thanks Delia).
After measuring everything out, you first cream the butter, shortening (that is, essentially, lard - it's supposed to give texture...) and sugar, so it goes from this:
To this - a nice, light pale mixture:
Then you add two eggs and whisk:
Then you mix the dry ingredients - flour, baking powder, cream of tartar and salt - together, add them to the creamed sugar mixture and whisk again till you get a dough like this:
Roll the dough out on a floured surface (the dough is quite sticky due to the fat content so you're going to need quite a heavily floured surface, and maybe on top and on the rolling pin) and cut some shapes out!
You can use a glass if you don't have a cookie cutter, but I had a pretty heart one:
Put your cookies onto a greaseproof paper covered baking tray, wide enough apart so they don't merge when they're cooking (and they will try):
Bake them for about 9 minutes at about 180°C till they're golden brown and ice them with your buttercream frosting dyed pink (I couldnt find ready made frosting so I made some
using this), and viola! philosophy Pink Frosted Cookies!
Taste-wise, well, they were fine - the biscuit mixture could have done with some vanilla or something but for a basic recipe it was pretty good! I wish I'd been able to find metallic pink food colouring though to match the bottle. Philosophy - you guys should really think about launching a cookbook, we'd totally buy it. After all the fun we had with this, we're on a roll, so stay tuned next week for philosophy Sugar Chick Sugar Coated Marshmallows! And when summer gets here we're starting on the cocktails. All in the name of work, obviously.
