In a medium sized bowl place the butter and icing sugar. Beat on high until you have a creamy, light and fluffy mixture.

Add your egg and vanilla extract and beat again until they incorporate fully and return to a fluffy mixture.

Pop your salt and flours in on top and bring together with a spoon. You will need to make sure all of your flour is mixed in thoroughly. Your dough will be quite sticky still at this stage.

Transfer your dough to a large piece of cling wrap and cover well. You don't want any pieces bare otherwise they will dry out once chilling. Smooth your dough out in the cling wrap and flatten slightly into a disc shape. Leave in the fridge for 45 minutes or 20 minutes in the freezer to chill.

Once your dough has finished chilling, you can heat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Pull your dough out and leave on your bench to come back to room temperature just so that it is workable. Approx 10 minutes (though this can vary depending on how hot or cold your home is at the time).

Unwrap and place your dough onto a well floured bench. Sprinkle a little extra flour on top and flour your rolling pin well. Begin to work your dough out. If the dough is tearing or cracking too much it's still too cold. Allow it to warm up a little and try again.

Keep rolling your dough out until you have an even 1cm thickness. Using floured cookie cutters cut out your shapes and transfer them to a prepared tray covered in a piece of baking paper. An egg slicer or off set spatula can be handy here if they are a little soft to move still.

Your cookies won't spread, so you can place them quite close together on your tray! Once your tray is full, pop it into the fridge for a further 15 minutes. This is just to solidify the butter in your cookies and stop them from spreading!

Once hard, transfer them straight into the oven for 8 minutes. They will not colour on top, though you might find a corner or two goes just a light brown on the edge. Once the 8 minutes is up, pop them out and leave them to fully cool on the tray before transferring to a wire rack.

Finish with royal icing decorations or enjoy as is! These babies will keep for over a week in an air tight container.