Following on neatly from my previous post, the magazine clip below, of decorated biscuits (by Joanna Farrow), is a scrap I’ve had since I was little. I remember at the time being inspired by the subtle pastel colours and sophisticated patterns which were a million miles away from the supermarket jammy dodgers and party ring-ilk biscuits I was used to.
So, the image made me come over all creative and I decided to treat my little brother, who is studying for his A-levels, and send him some homemade decorated biscuits (perhaps not suitable for a Boy but then again, I did use to dress him up as a girl when he was 5 so he’s used to it!).
Firstly I made the actual biscuit which was the easy bit as I have been using Nigella Lawson’s Birthday Biscuit recipe (from ‘Feast’) for years and it is totally foolproof for achieving simple buttery biscuits perfect for decoration. Then the icing: my piping ‘skills’ are virtually non-existent so, for a neat start I thinly rolled out marzipan and royal icing to fit the shapes of the biscuits, sticking them down with a brush of water on the underside. This looked fairly professional. I then made a royal icing by mixing one egg white with enough icing sugar to make a stiff paste which I divided and coloured accordingly. What came next was a fight with a piping bag I’d never used before, and a lot of experimenting with different patterns and techniques (hence the varying results you can see!). I then added some silver dragees which never fail to make things look a lot better. After they had dried, I boxed them up to send, layering them between sheets of parchment wrapped in tissue and a velvet ribbon.
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