Making Neapolitan Button Cookies

When my husband and little girl were away to the in-laws' house this afternoon, I had almost 3 hours for myself. During this me-time, I managed to read my favourite magazine whilst lying on my bed with face mask on. *Bliss* After I removed my face mask some 20 minutes later, I decided to do something more meaningful and useful on this 'quiet break' which Mommy Christine hardly enjoys.

This said, I headed to my kitchen and started baking some cookies which I had not done for a pretty long time. Suddenly, I thought of making cookie in button shape because I found cookies in button shape really adorable and doable for me to create. Also, inspired by the beautiful colour of Neapolitan ice cream, I chose the Neapolitan theme for these cookies - chocolate, pink and white. Neapolitan Button Cookies are our cookies for the day.

To make these butter button cookies, I modified the basic egg-less butter cookies recipe from this source. Anyway, you can use any basic butter cookies recipes you already have on hand to make these cute cookies.

Here is the recipe I used for making my Neapolitan Button Cookies today.

Cute as a button, they say!

Neapolitan Button Cookies

Ingredients

• 125gr Unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 80gr Icing sugar
• 150gr Flour
• 1 tbs Milk powder
• 1/2 tsp Vanilla essence
• 1 tbs Cocoa powder
• 1-2 drops of Chocolate essence
• 1-2 drops of Strawberry essence
• Red food colouring, as needed

Tutorials:

1. Sift icing sugar in a bowl. Set aside.
2. Sift together flour and milk powder. Set aside.
3. Using electric mixer, mix the icing sugar, vanilla essence and butter until pale and creamy.
4. Slowly add the flour mixture to the creamed butter and mix well using a rubber spatula until the dough doesn't stick to the bowl.
5. Divide the dough into 3 parts in 3 separate bowl. Leave 1/3 of the plain dough aside for the white button cookies.
6. Evenly mix 1/3 of the dough with cocoa powder and chocolate essence. Set aside.
7. Evenly mix 1/3 of the dough with strawberry essence and red colouring. Set aside. 
8. Mould the dough into equal round shape and place the cookies in a tray already lined with a parchment paper. 
9. Add an inner ring to each of the cookie by gently pressing a bottle cap or round shape cookie cutter slightly smaller than the cookies' size. Poke 4 button holes into each cookie with skewer or small straw.
10. Bake the cookies in a preheated oven (about 160 degree Celcius) for about 15-20 minutes.

Neapolitan butter button cookies.

These cookies are so easy to bake and I enjoyed making them. It only took me about 1.5 hours in total to make the cookie dough, mould the cookies, baked them and cleaned my kitchen. I don't really fancy doing the latter tough - but somehow I keep making mess in my kitchen on daily basis.

Want some?

Finally, I think anything in button shapes are so cute but this law strictly doesn't apply to Coraline's. Google it if you want to know what I mean. 

I am submitting this recipe to Aspiring Bakers #36: Choc-a-Cookie (October 2013) hosted by Genie of Honeybee916food.