Mikado

First prepare the cookie dough following our recipe for decorated summer cookies , but use half the quantity. We leave out the lemon zest here, so the sticks taste as close to the original as possible.

In short: cream the butter and icing sugar, add the egg and salt, then flour mix in briefly and shape the dough into a ball by hand. The less you knead, the better the sticks keep their shape when baked.

Roll the dough out between two baking paperas described in the basic recipe, then place it in the freezer. Well-chilled dough can be cut into fine sticks much more cleanly.

Preheat your oven to 135 °C fan.

Once the dough is rolled out and well chilled, cut it into sticks measuring 15 x 0.5 cm, for example with a pastry wheel. Place the sticks on a perforated tray with a perforated baking mat. The combination of perforated tray and perforated mat ensures the sticks bake evenly.

Bake the sticks for 15 to 18 minutes in the middle of the oven. Then let them cool completely before you start decorating.

Put the Deco melts with milk chocolate flavour into a fairly tall glass and melt them in the microwave for 1 minute at 600 watts. Stir well. If not everything has melted yet, just heat them for a few more seconds.

These drops are perfect for this recipe: you don't need to temper them, just melt them, and they taste really good like Milk chocolate.

Dip the sticks halfway into the melted Deco melts and scrape off the excess against the rim of the glass. Decorate them immediately with the Mix sugar sprinkles and the blue and pink nonpareils while the chocolate is still liquid.

Place the decorated mikado on a baking paper and let them set in the fridge for 15 minutes. Voilà, they are ready to enjoy or to give away in a pretty tin.