Tips for Icing Biscuits

If you are a total beginner with the whole biscuit icing thing like me then you might enjoy the Biscuiteers book, it is brilliant. This is what I have learnt from so far. The above icing is royal icing made from pure icing sugar and egg whites. There are plenty of recipes floating around the net. This is what the consistency looks like that you use for the line icing.



How pretty - can you imagine having all those colours ready to go!



Line icing is basically the thicker icing you use for the border above and to then decorate later on. The book has great images (below) to demonstrate how it is done.





We used this for the line icing and flood icing - about $6 from kitchen shops - I couldn't find any clear ones in the $2 shop! It was great to 'flood' with and for a 3 yr old good for using to do the line icing. I might try a disposable icing bag next time with a finer point?! Wait for the lines to dry then move onto 'flooding'.



You add very little water to the line icing to make flood icing (again check an online recipe). Then fill in the biscuit - the fun part! We used the back of a skewer to smooth it over and fill in the gaps rather than pouring on more icing!



This was what it looked like decorated before we popped them in a very low oven to dry (as suggested by the book - as the biscuits sometimes get soggy) see the end result here! I let some air dry over night and they were fine though!



We aren't quite here yet but something to work towards :-) Some other tutorials on flood icing.

Dessert Bar - Baking and Cake Decorating Suppliers

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After waking from yesterday's sugar coma, I still had sugary goodness on the brain and felt inclined to share a couple of great Australian suppliers I have found on-line. One is Little Betsy Baker who I have blogged about previously and recently I discovered another called Baking Pleasures. They cross-over a little in supplies but do have different things.

Some supplies you can pick up from Baking Pleasures to make your dessert bar shine for any special occasion:



Cupcake wrappers


Stencils




Cookie texture sets


Cupcake toppers - If you want to just ice your cupcake and pop something ready made on top these perfect!

Get inspired for your next birthday party, kitchen tea or baby shower! The boys don't miss out there are all sorts of goodies for them too!

Customer Service

I ordered some lovely Christmas cookie cutters from Little Betsy Baker with the intention of making some more clay decs for the markets but Australia post let me down and the package never arrived :-( Boo.... BUT.... the lovely people at LBB were very understanding, showed excellent customer service and sent me another set out yesterday which promptly arrived just now! When you run your own little business it's good to be on the receiving end of good customer service, particularly when it comes to problem management. It reminds you of why it's good to go the extra mile, trust your customers word and do all you can to resolve problems. These might end up being for special Christmas cookies now although I doubt they will look as good as the divine cookie in the 2nd photo - that's a work of art! Thanks LBB.

Macro Monday - Gingerbread biscuits

Gingerbread Cookies

• 2 cups SR Flour
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon .....mix all these together in a mixing bowl
• 50g butter
• 3 tablespoons Golden Syrup
• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar ....melt together in a saucepan, stirring until butter is melted.

1. Then add 3 tablespoon cream to the butter mix and stir into dry ingredients until a good consistency dough is formed. Add more cream if needed.
2. Roll out on a floured surface and cut to the shapes you like. Roll together the scraps of dough and cut out shapes again. You can do this many times until all dough is used as it rolls out very well.
3. Bake 10mins at 180*C...makes about 30 gingerbread men. Turn trays half way through cooking to cook evenly. They don't spread much so you can put close together on the baking tray
   

Last week before Anya got sick we made Gingerbread biscuits - it was so much fun! Thanks Gwennyth for the recipe. I let Anya roll out the dough but every time I turned my back the dough would disappear, her chubby cheeks chewing as fast as she could to eat it all before she was busted, it was hilarious. She actually didn't enjoy the baked biscuits as much for some reason but we sure did! We had lots of leg-less gingerbread men. The perfectionist in me sat on my hands and let her cut out her shapes - it was well worth the constraint on my behalf to see her have such fun :-) I might try chocolate ones next time without the spices and add almond meal or something!?

MACRO Monday

MMMmmm, so proud of Friday afternoon's efforts! I made these from scratch. The pastry tasted soooo good. They are Donna Hay's - Pear and Rhubarb pies. Very sweet! They are on page 160 of the Modern Classics Book 2 if you are interested.

I hope you had a sweet weekend, we did - spent half of it in Canberra the other half in Sydney! Gordon has a conference in town, so I am enjoying a few days with my folks and little (almost bigger than me) brother.