Cute and delicious, soft and chewy, these adorable baked butter cookies are shaped into pigs to celebrate the upcoming year of the pig!
Looking for homemade butter cookies in easy recipes to show some love to your loved ones this holiday season? Look no more! As this pig-decorated butter cookies recipe is the best way to go to add a festive touch to your baked cookies.
In the year of the pig, I have seen a lot of bakers attempt to bake cookies inspired by the pig such as this Piggy German Butter Cookie. Not only are cookies the ones being inspired by the lunar new year, but things from decorations to dishes as well.
This butter cookie recipe gives cute piggies that are as buttery as shortbread cookies while as crumbly as butter cookies. Moreover, with the sweetness in this cookie which is not too overly sweet, it is simply a perfect butter cookie recipe that works as a snack or even a home-baked gift to your friends and family. When you start to put one in your mouth to enjoy the melt-in-the-mouth sensation, you are going to snack on them until they are all gone.
What I love about this butter cookie recipe is that it encourages you to be creative! You can basically shape this 6-ingredient German butter cookie dough into any style you like. My baking buddy, Mandy, has done a wonderful job by shaping the Piggy German Butter Cookie into a few styles and all of them are so adorable. Be it a simple piggy head, a lying down piggy, a valentine piggy, or even a piggy wearing a Chinese New Year costume (scroll down to the last image), they sure are as wonderful as your typical homemade danish butter cookies!
PIGGY GERMAN BUTTER COOKIES RECIPE
scroll ⬇️ to get the detailed printable recipe
If you don’t have the patience for shaping different types of cookie doughs into different figures, then you can easily play around with cookie cutters, purpose flour, and a piping bag as well to create some really cute cookies!
Origins of the classic butter cookie recipe
The traditional buttery taste butter cookie recipe originated in Denmark, and they were originally called Danish biscuits. It is often classified as a crisp cookie due to its crunchy texture however, cookie recipes now sport gooey butter cookies and soft cookies as a homemade version alternative as well. Butter cookies are often served plain, but some recipes top them with melted chocolate or even sugar crystals to have a more merry Christmas. However, in Asian countries like Hong Kong and Malaysia, we tend to serve them to our loved ones to wish them a happy new year.
This crispy yet melt-in-your-mouth delicious treat also comes in many shapes and sizes. The most popular would be the butter cookie set found in the blue tin in your local supermarkets. They can be circular, squared, pretzel-shaped, or even piggy-shaped like this butter cookie recipe I am sharing with you today!
Ingredients in this butter cookies recipe
Here is a concise list of wet and dry ingredients that are used in this piggy-shaped butter cookies recipe. All ingredients here are at room temperature unless stated otherwise.
- Unsalted Butter
- Powdered Sugar / Confectioners Sugar / Icing Sugar (these types of sugars are finer than regular white sugar or brown coarse sugar)
- Potato Flour
- All Purpose Flour (sieved)
- Full Cream Milk Powder
- Pinch of salt
- Pink Food coloring (For piggy design)
- Black Sesame Seeds (For piggy design)
- vanilla extract or almond extract is optional
Baking Tools Needed
These german cookies require the following baking tools:
- Parchment Paper / large baking sheets
- Large Bowl
- Medium Bowl
- small bowl
- Weighing Scale
- Toothpick
- Mixer (To cream butter and sugar)
- Sifter
- Spatula
Just a simple tweak on the design, this is one of the popular german cookie recipes that can be turned into a lovely romantic cookie, perfect for any occasion, especially the upcoming Valentine’s Day.
Tips for Success
- Preheat oven to 150ºC for 20 mins before baking
- Weigh your flour well! The tip to ensure you have an even consistency of the soft dough is to make sure you follow the recipe
- Do not overbake! If not, your butter cookies will become much too crisp and even slightly charred and will crack — affecting the appearance of your cute piggy cookies.
STORING AND FREEZING YOUR BUTTER COOKIES
You can store your butter cookies in an airtight container or ziplock bag at room temperature for up to a week. If you want these cute cookies to last wayyy past the holiday season (for up to three months), you can stack your undecorated cookies and wrap them with plastic and then place them in airtight containers in the freezer. When you want to savor them again, let them thaw in the fridge before decorating them or eating them plain.
If you have tried this Butter Cookies recipe and loved it, I have more recipes in my recipe section for you to master. For more cookie recipes, you can try my Ginger Snap Cookies (another Holiday favorite), Hello Kitty cookies, animal cookies, and Burger cookies.
For more Piggy-themed crafts, you can always make:
- crochet pig stuffed animal,
- crochet piggy amigurumi,
- crochet piggy bun amigurumi,
- easy pig stuffed animal make from sock,
- piggy pillow sewn from bath towels, and
- piggy clay charm.
Piggy German Butter Cookies Recipe
Looking for homemade butter cookies in easy recipes to show some love to your loved ones this holiday season? Look no more! As this pig-decorated butter cookies recipe is the best way to go to add a festive touch to your baked cookies.
Recipe source: Facebook – Enne Ty
Contributed: Mandy Choong
Enjoy baking them!
Ingredients
- 125 gram Unsalted Butter
- 50 gram Powdered Sugar / Confectioners Sugar / Icing Sugar
- 95 gram Potato Flour
- 120 gram All Purpose Flour (sieved)
- 10 gram Full Cream Milk Powder
- Pinch of salt
- Pink Food coloring
- Black Sesame Seeds
Instructions
Basic Piggy Shaping
- Preheat the oven to 150ºC now or 20 mins before baking. Measure and prepare the ingredients as listed in the recipe.
- Cream butter and icing sugar till fluffy (about 1 min). You may use a stand mixer with a paddle attachment or a hand mixer to cream.
- Fold in sieved flours, milk powder, and salt, mix well and form a dough.
- Remove 1-2 Tbsp of dough to mix with pink food coloring (1-2 dots from a toothpick).
- To make the piggy face, weigh 8g for each ball from the plain dough, and arrange them on the baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
The pink dough is to make ears and snout, just pinch 3 tiny balls of dough and shape them into 2 triangles and an oval ball (for each pig).
- Arranged 2 pink triangles on top as ears and an oval ball in front as a snout.
- Stick black sesame seeds to make eyes, and press lightly onto the dough to prevent them from falling off after baking. (I used a toothpick to do the job). Use a toothpick to make 2 pierced holes for the snout.
- Bake in a preheated oven, on the 2nd lower shelf, for 20-25 minutes. (Rotate trays if needed to)
- After removing from the oven, cool for 5 minutes on a baking tray. Transferred to a cooling rack to cool completely before storing in an airtight container.
Valentine’s Piggy Shaping
For the other pattern with 4 tiny hinds facing up, I used:
10g dough ball for the body (flatten lightly)
4 tiny balls for hinds
2 triangles (pink) for ears
1 oval for a snout
Challenge yourself with a more complicated design to make the basic Piggy German Butter Cookie into a Chinese New Year theme piggy cookie.
Notes
- Use butter at room temperature.
- The dough will deflate and expand a little after baked.
- Besides using black sesame seeds for eyes, you may draw them with an edible ink pen.
- This butter cookie dough is easy to make into any pattern, by using different colors and shapes.
Get the full article at https://www.craftpassion.com/piggy-butter-cookies-recipe/
Nutrition Information:
Yield: 12 Serving Size: 12Amount Per Serving: Calories: 156Total Fat: 8.6gSaturated Fat: 5.4gCholesterol: 22mgSodium: 65mgCarbohydrates: 18.5gFiber: 0.7gSugar: 4.5gProtein: 1.7g
Coco in the Kitchen
Wednesday 1st of May 2019
OMG I can't, I just can't! These are SO stinkin' cute! Happy Year of the Piggy!
Christy
Saturday 6th of April 2019
Can't wait to try this recipe. I love butter cookies!
Amber
Tuesday 23rd of April 2019
I don't know what I did wrong. These were so so so dry to shape, dough didn't hold together at all like your photos. Thoughts?
Craft Passion
Monday 8th of April 2019
Yahhooooo!!!! We all love butter cookies :)
Valentina
Wednesday 13th of February 2019
Hi, tell me please, how i can replace Full Cream Milk Powder? Can i use normal milk or cream? Thanks)
Heart Coasters - Valentine's Crochet Pattern • Craft Passion
Wednesday 13th of February 2019
[…] Noticed the little piggy cookies? Bake yours with this recipe. […]
Just a Fat boi
Monday 4th of February 2019
I actually made according to these recipe with a 1:1 substitution of Plain flour: potato flour, since I couldn't find any in the supermarket, and it turned out alright. Mine were also less smooth and more prone to cracking, so using the potato flour is probably recommended, but in a pinch plain flour will work. Probably not the intended texture, but still delicious and looks like piggy.
Craft Passion
Saturday 9th of February 2019
Thank you for letting us know the outcome with plain flour substitution. I am sure the taste should be similar, perhaps not as fluffy and as melt-in-the-mouth as using potato flour. We tried corn flour before and it cracks a bit too, but it tastes similar.