Halloween Biscuits
These sugar biscuits are quick and simple to make although icing them needs some patience!
I use disposable icing bags as its easier to have all the icing to hand rather than messing about keep filling bags with different colour icing each time you need it. I made the biscuits the night before I iced them so they were completely cold.
Sugar Biscuits
3 1/2 oz butter at room temperature
3 1/2 oz caster sugar
1 medium egg
10 oz plain flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Royal Icing
icing sugar
1 egg white
food colouring
1. Preheat oven to190 degrees centigrade. Line baking sheets with greaseproof paper
2. Cream butter and sugar together in a bowl until combined.
3. Beat in the egg and vanilla until well combined.
4. Stir in the flour until the mixture comes together as a dough.
5. Roll the dough out on a floured surface to a thickness of about 1cm.
6. Using shaped cutters, cut out the dough and carefully place on baking sheets leaving a gap between each biscuit.
7. Bake the biscuits for 8-10 minutes, or until pale golden brown. Allow to harden for 5 minutes then allow to completely cool on a wire rack.
Icing
I didn't specify a weight for icing sugar as I make it by putting an egg white in a bowl and just keep adding more sieved icing sugar and mixing it with a hand mixer until it gets to the consistency of toothpaste. Not very scientific I know, but it works that way and you don't end up with runny icing because your egg white was bigger than the one they used in the original recipe!Now divide the icing into however many separate bowls you need for colouring, I used 5 different colours, so I used 5 bowls. I used gel colouring as it keeps the icing from going runny. Mix up the colours you will need, then using disposable piping bags, nip a small piece off the end and put enough icing in the bag to online the biscuits, leaving some icing in the bowl. Pipe a line around the outside of each shape, the pumpkins were piped into three sections so the flood icing kept some definition (see photo) and I piped around the "Boo" so the flood icing could not escape through the holes. Allow this outline to dry for about 5 minutes. Add a small amount of water (I mean drips!) to the icing left in the bowl so it is of a runnier consistency. Using a teaspoon and a cocktail stick put a little icing onto the biscuit and encourage the runny icing to the piping line, continue until the biscuit is covered. The pumpkins need flood icing in sections,flood the middle section and allow to dry before flooding the two outer sections. When the flood icing is dry use the line piping icing to add decoration.
