Begin by cubing your butter & letting it soften & come to room temperature. Cubing roughly to about 1cm (less than ½”) cubes as a smaller surface area will soften faster. If you forget to take the butter out to soften, here’s a hack I reviewed to soften butter in about 10 minutes. Once softened enough (see my video of how to check if it's soft enough), combine the butter, sugar, syrup, baking soda (bicarb) & salt in a large bowl and mix on low (or by hand) until it starts to become moistened. Then increase the speed to medium & beat until light & fluffy (approx. 3 minutes depending on the power of your hand/stand-mixer.) See Photo 1 below. Next add very small amounts of the colouring paste by using a cocktail stick. (See notes for recommendations on what food colouring to use). I find it easiest to scrape onto the ends of the mixer's beaters. (That way you don't stain your bowl). Then simply mix thoroughly & leave 30 seconds for the colour to develop, before adding another small amount until you get a shade like in Photo 2. (Kind of a peach colour with a red tinge to it. You don’t want it to be a true ‘red’ at this point & that would require more colouring). Best to always add small drops & get the exact shade you want, than add too much. Be sure to place the used cocktail stick on some paper & wear gloves if needed, as it does stain badly.
In a separate bowl, sieve the flour & cocoa powder & mix together to combine. With the mixer on low, slowly sprinkle in the dry ingredients until it forms a relatively thick, stiff dough. See Photo 3. Using your hands, knead against the insides of the bowl to form a smooth ball of dough.
Line the baking sheets/trays with baking/parchment paper. If it's a tray with no lips, I hold the paper in place with some baking spray. I have learned the hard way, that without it, the paper & dough or baked cookies can fall off and we don't want that!
On a worktop/counter, place some baking/parchment paper down & a little icing/powdered sugar if needed. Flatten the dough into a disc. Dust the rolling pin too (you can even use cocoa powder) & roll out the dough to a 4-5mm (⅙- ⅕ “) thickness. (Alternatively roll out between 2 sheets of the paper). I used a £2 coin and 1p to get a minimum thickness. Brush off any excess sugar/cocoa. Photo 4.
Dust the cookie cutter in icing/powdered sugar or cocoa & cut out as many cookies as you can, re-rolling the scraps and repeating until all used up. Remember to try to make pairs of cookies to sandwich together. See Photo 5 for some ideas of shape you can out. Just make sure you have enough ‘pairs’ to match up.
Next, place the cookies on the baking sheets with a little gap in-between. See Photo 5 above. If doing different sizes of cookies, or ones with cut-outs, please be sure to keep smaller ones on the same tray as there will be a very slight difference in baking times.
Chill for 1 hr before baking, to ensure they keep their shape and don’t spread out much. This is key and helps not end up with a tough cookie.
Heat up the oven up to 180/160c Fan Oven/350f/Gas Mark 4, to coincide with the 1-hour chilling time ending.
Pop in the oven & bake for 8-12 minutes until firm enough that you can make them move a little, when gently pushed with a spatula. They should still be soft. Remember to turn & rotate the baking sheets during cooking. With the 3 different shapes I baked them for 8 -9 minutes. See Photo 6 below.
Leave to cool for 5 minutes on the tray, on top of a colling rack, before transferring, paper & all to the cooling rack to cool down completely.