My son has recently started school here in New Zealand and has been learning about Matariki, the M?ori new year. This is what inspired me to get in the kitchen and make these Galaxy Iced cookies with the kids. So we could all learn a little more about Matariki in a fun way.
What we learned About Matariki
- Matariki is the M?ori name for a cluster of 7 stars
- This cluster of stars disappear from the night sky, and then reappears around the time of the longest day of the year (so the middle of winter) June
- When the stars become visible again this marks the beginning of the M?ori new year
- This was a time to prepare the ground and look to plant the crops for the coming year
- There are a number of legends around the seven stars
We also learned the names of the 7 Stars, (Thanks to a great little song my son learned, the tune is the Macarena)
“Waiti Waita Waipunarangi
Tupuanuku Tupuarangi
Ko ururangi te potiki
o te whanau Matariki”
Galaxy Iced Cookies Video Tutorial
Galaxy Iced Cookies
Prep
Cook
Total
Yield 20-40 Cookies
Galaxy Iced Cookies a Fun Baking Project To Make With The Kids
Ingredients
Star Cookies
- 225g salted butter
- 1 Cup white sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 egg
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 3 Cups flour
Galaxy Icing
- 3 cups icing sugar
- 4-6 Tbsp milk
- 1 tsp vanilla icing
- gel food colouring
- Edible silver balls
Instructions
- Use an electric beater or cake mixer to cream butter and sugar, cream the butter and until very smooth and as white as possible
- Add the vanilla and egg, beat
- In a separate bowl mix the flour and baking powder with a fork, so it's combined
- Slowly add the dry mix to the creamed butter and sugar, it will become quite stiff
- Turn it out and knead
- Chill the dough just for a short time, I found 10 mins in the fridge perfect
- Roll out (I do this between 2 sheets of baking paper
- Cut into star shapes (Get the kids to help), keep bringing together the offcuts re-roll and make more stars!
- Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 8 mins, leave on the baking tray to cool for a few minutes before transferring onto a cooling rack, allow to cool completely
- Combine the icing/glace ingredients (icing sugar, vanilla, milk) using a whisk. I did this in three small bowls so that each of my kids could have a bowl of icing
- Watch the video tutorial above to see how we did the icing. Use toothpicks to dip small amounts of food colouring into the icing, use a toothpick to create swirl patterns. Once it is swirly enough, take a cookie and dip it into the icing, leave on a rack to harden. While icing is still soft add the edible silver balls, 7 for each cookie representing the stars of Matariki
- Repeat until all the cookies are iced, you can keep adding small amounts of food colouring and swirling the icing to create new patterns/
Notes
The glaze needs to be relatively thick, if you look closely in my pictures you will see some of my cookies have a grainy texture to the icing, these are the ones where I tried thinning down the glaze, yes you got better swirl patterns, but as the icing set you ended up with the grainy texture so keep the glaze quite thick
Courses Baking
Cuisine New Zealand
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