I’ve always admired those delicious looking iced biscuits that you find in boutique bakeries or on a cakestand for afternoon tea in a trendy cafe or top hotel.  But unfortunately I didn’t have a clue how to recreate them in my own kitchen.  I tend to stick to buttercream when icing cakes as it’s easy, tasty and you generally can’t go wrong with it.

So when I saw a Boutique Biscuit course advertised locally, I jumped at the chance of signing my name on the dotted line to ensure I had a place.  The course ran over a couple of evenings last week.  On the first night we baked the biscuits and on the second night we iced them.

The key to these biscuits looking good is ensuring a good line is piped around the edge to contain the flooded icing – a skill that is hard to perfect – trying to turn the biscuit to ensure a continuous fine line is harder than it looks although a few wobbles here and there you can get away with.

I love the different effects you can create by dropping other colours into your flooded iced area whilst still wet such as polka dots or stripes.  And then once dry you can pipe further detail on top to make your iced biscuits look three dimensional.  I am now a master at making greaseproof icing bags after considerable practice from using them at various stages of the icing process, from piping to flooding and the various colours I chose to use in my designs.

I think these will make great gifts for friends and family and already used some of my first batch as part of my Mother’s Day gift, wrapped in a cellophane bag with some pretty ribbon.  I posted these 250 miles to my mum and they arrived safe and complete and were enjoyed by both of my parents.

I can’t wait to bake my next batch at home.  I’m going to go for a chocolately biscuit dough as I do like a bit of chocolate but I also think that the contrast of icing against a dark background will look fabulous.