Iced Gems
Much tastier than the shop bought ones, with these you can customise with your own flavours and colours, and you don't end up with all the broken pieces at the bottom of the packet!
Ingredients:
- 70g unsalted butter
- 30g caster sugar
- 110g plain flour
- 1 tsp vanilla essence or extract
- 250g royal icing sugar
- water (around 3-4 tbsp)
- Few drops of food flavouring (e.g, raspberry, caramel)
- Different coloured food colouring
Method:
- With an electric mixer, beat together the butter and sugar.
- Add the flour and vanilla essence and mix until it comes together to form a dough.
- Wrap and chill the dough for 20 minutes in the fridge.
- Meanwhile pre-heat the oven to 180 C (fan).
- Roll the dough out to the thickness of a pound coin, and using a small cutter (around 2-3cm) or the end of a piping nozzle, cut out as many biscuits as you can (around 50) and place on a lined baking tray.
- Bake for 8-10 minutes - keep an eye on them as they can quickly go from under-baked to over-baked.
- While they are cooling, make the icing.
- Mix half the water with the royal icing sugar with an electric mixer, and then very slowly add more water, mixing throughly with each addition. Add your flavouring here if you are using it. You are looking for a thick consistency as you want the 'gems' to hold their shape when piped! You may need more or less water depending on what brand of royal icing sugar you are using.
- Divide the icing into different bowls depending on how many colours you want, and mix with food colouring.
- Transfer the icing to a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle, and pipe a little 'gem' onto each biscuit.
- Leave to dry, letting the icing set.
- Enjoy!
Head to my Instagram Highlights @alice.fevronia for a video on how to make these, and if you give them a go, please tag me, I would love to see!
