Frozen Snowflake Iced Biscuits & Christmas Pinnies and Petticoats

Monday 29 December 2014
Christmas came to Aberdeen's Pinnies and Petticoats Baking Club at the end of November but I'm only now getting round to sharing. Such is the whirlwind of December. My own creation for our festive meet were Frozen themed Snowflake Iced Biscuits. Elsa? Knock, Knock, Knock. Do you wanna eat a cookie?
These came about as a result of a course that I attended run by Karen McCormack of Sucre Coeur. I'd first met Karen back in 2013 when she created an amazing Gingerbread Village for the Crail Food Festival. I'd been stalking her on social media ever since so was delighted to see that she was offering classes and wasted no time booking myself on to "Decorating Cookies with Royal Icing"



I spent a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon in the East Neuk learning the basics of biscuit decorating with royal icing. Karen of course made it all look so easy. Plenty of tips and hints shared along the way the first being to wrap the gap between your mixer and bowl with clingfilm to avoid an icing sugar cloud. Secondly to add small amounts of water to the icing with a plant spray bottle. However the absolute genius tip is to use a clippit to seal off the nozzle of a piping bag as you fill it so the contents doesn't immediately come straight out. This is a lifechanger.
All too soon it was our turn. Firstly paper to practice on, then rich tea biscuits before finally moving onto real biscuits. We were able to try out lots of different techniques and colours and get plenty of advice along the way. I was pretty chuffed with what I managed to create by the end of the afternoon and took my pizza box of cookies home with pride.
All very well decorating under Karen's watchful eye but would I be able to create anything worthy of Pinnies and Petticoats. As always we had a fantastic bumper selection of cakes, bakes and other goodies for our Christmas meet.
Ginger Stars
Gingerbread Men
Stained Glass Ginger Biscuits
Stilton, Parma Ham and Chutney Spindles
Bacon, Brie and Chilli Jam Pinwheels
Goats Cheese & Tomato Pastries
Pigs in Blankets
Chocolate Trees
Cornflake Wreaths
Savoury Candy Canes
Spinach, Cranberry & Goats Cheese Tartlets
Chocolate covered Stollen
Stollen
Snowballs with White Chocolate & Coconut
Sour Cherry Amaretti
Gingerbread Swiss Roll
Yule Log with Maple & Pecan
Bourbon & Honeycomb Yule Log
Gingerbread Latte Fudge
Cranberry & Hazelnut Biscotti
Christmas Pudding profiteroles
Candy Cane Marshmallows
Mincemeat Pies
The secret in decorating cookies is to get the consistency of your icing correct for each different element of your biscuit design. This is the part I worried about getting right at home. I don't have a stand mixer so had to use a handheld one. I was rather short of the right sizes of nozzles and didn't have a plant sprayer that hadn't been used for spraying plants. What's that saying about a bad workman always blaming his tools? I did however manage to use my oven on a very low temperature to dry my work-in-progress biscuits. After some stressful outlining and flooding moments I did finally manage to produce something recognisable as snowflakes and even got a reasonably close colour match to Elsa's dress. Thank goodness for edible shimmer spray and silver balls to bling them up a bit.
The first 2015 meet of Pinnies & Petticoats takes place on 14th January and the theme is to bake something from a book received for Christmas or with equipment/ingredients received. New bakers are always welcome. Check out their Facebook page for all the information. New Year, New Recipes!

1 comment

  1. My icing skills need brushing up, but first I'm off to buy some Clippits! Brilliant tip! My niece and nephew bought me the singalong Frozen DVD for Christmas as they were shocked I had never seen it, so I may be inspired there too!

    ReplyDelete

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