Iced Biscuits Are My New Vice...

Iced by meee, inspired by Cupookie

I was at work the other day when I got an email from Emerald Street casually mentioning a competition to win an icing class at the Biscuiteers School of Icing in Notting Hill London.

Magical place of wonderment

I nearly fell off of my chair.

How did the existence of a such a magical place escape my attention?

Like really though...?

Cake :)

I entered the competition twice and then remembered that I can't leave key life events like this in the hands of competitions associated with the Stylist Magazine, so I booked a space on the first available class.

Butterfly cookies

Arguably, that level of urgency wasn't entirely necessary. Arguably, I could have put the money towards fixing my car or paying a bill. You could even argue that I should have waited on the outcome of the competition in case I won.

But what can I say? I'm impulsive like that. 

Plus I've been under a lot of stress lately and my heart skipped a happy beat when I thought about doing the course. It appears iced biscuits are my new vice.

Lorena - my cool teacher :)

Besides, due to a series of (un)fortunate events, I was the only person in the class. I think my excitement at having a 1-2-1 icing session was more than the teacher bargained for. 

Sometimes I wish I was slightly less impulsive & more sensible with my decisions. I wish I knew how to have balance and spend a little time in my comfort zone rather than on a constant knife's edge. And other times I love my life and the fact that I never know what the next day or hour might bring. I love seizing opportunities and being a pioneer in my own destiny.

Mostly though, I like icing biscuits and Notting Hill.

Peace & Love

xx

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Advent Calendars & Chocolate Biscuits

“Better late than never, but never late is better..” (Drake)

Yes, it’s that time of year again & even though it’s almost halfway through the month, these biscuits are just too cute to not share with you!

The biscuits are based on a recipe I found on the BBC Good Food website, (click here for the link). I’m always on the look-out for a nice biscuit recipe, personally I’m into crunchy biscuits rather than soft ones. I found that the combination of the dark chocolate and the thick layer of white chocolate made this a really tasty mix.

Chocolate, ginger and white chocolate biscuits

• 300g plain flour

• 50g cocoa

• 1.5 tbsp ground ginger

• 120g butter, cubed

• 120g molasses or brown sugar

• 140g golden syrup

• 200g white chocolate

• Glitter, sprinkles and royal icing to decorate

• Put the flour, cocoa, ginger, butter and sugar in a processor, and mix until you can’t see any lumps of butter. You can also rub in the butter using your fingers. Slowly pour in the syrup and pulse until you get a smooth dough.

• Take about a quarter of the dough at a time and roll out between 2 sheets of baking parchment to the thickness of a £1 coin. Leave to chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

• While the biscuits are in the fridge, heat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4.

• Peel away the top layer of baking paper and use cookie cutters to make shapes. Circles, triangles, stars and Christmas shapes, whatever takes your fancy. Leave a small space between each biscuit as they spread slightly while they cook.

• Continue rolling and shaping all the remaining dough and trimmings while you bake a tray at a time, until all the dough is used up and you have at least 24 biscuits.

• Bake for 8-10 mins until firm. The time needed in the oven will vary according to the size of your cookies and your oven. It might be an idea to test with one or two first. My first batch burnt because I left them in for too long! Leave the biscuits to cool completely before decorating.

• While the biscuits are cooling, melt the white chocolate. White chocolate has a lower boiling point than milk chocolate so can be a bit tricky. Click here for step-by-step instructions on how to do it http://www.wikihow.com/Melt-White-Chocolate.

• Pipe a border around the edges of the biscuits and then cover completely using the melted white chocolate. If you don’t want perfect edges you can cover the biscuits using a spoon.

• Whilst the chocolate is drying, add sprinkles, glitter and anything else you want to use to decorate. I piped on numbers using coloured royal icing, but seeing as we are almost halfway through the month, it’s arguable if that’s totally necessary!

Let me know how you get on!

Peace & Love

Xx

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Dia De Los Muertos

Day of the Dead or Dia de Los Muertos, is a Mexican holiday in which people remember family and friends who have passed away.

It's not something I've really celebrated before, but I have lost some close family members recently, in particular my sweet Uncle Lloyd who passed away in September, so it really resonated with me.

As it would so happen, my good friend threw a Day of The Dead party this weekend and it was a great excuse to get dressed up and bake sugar cookies!

I became a little bit obsessed with the cookies. In the top picture, I decorated the skulls using fondant cut-outs. In the picture above, I covered the cookies with fondant, left them to dry for 48 hours and used edible pens to decorate them. Click here for a good recipe for sugar cookies.


Peace & Love

xx

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Sugar Cookies

One of my Instagram friends thislakshmi, asked me the other day whether I did decorated cookies as she doesn't see pictures of them on my feed. The answer to that was no, not because I don't want to, but because I'm intimidated by piping icing! 

It sounds silly but I see loads of really cool cookie treats that I want to make but then I wimp out because I don't think it will look any good.

When she asked me about it, I realised that I'd let that fear stop me from actually improving my skills because I didn't even start! 

How often do we do that, become so paralysed by a fear of failure that we don't end up doing, creating or having the things that we desire?

Armed with the revelation that fear was holding me back from making beautiful cookies, I turned to my new baking bible - Amy Atlas's Sweet Designs and made some sugar cookies (recipe above). Then I made myself some royal icing,  (homemade royal icing by the way,  is so much more delicious than shop bought or ready-made stuff) and got to piping. I was so excited that I didn't even use any piping nozzles!

It's not the neatest but it's a start and I have now conquered that (irrational) fear of royal icing! I've got loads of ideas for what I want to do next so watch this space!

We gain strength and courage and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot. Eleanor Roosevelt

What will you do today?

Peace & Love

xx

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Chocolate and Banana Cookies

Cookies are made of butter and love - Norwegian Proverb

I don't make enough cookies, I really don't. I'm not sure why I feel this way as I've never been a cookie monster or anything, but whenever I see them I always wonder why I don't make them more often. 

I've had my eyes on a chocolate cookie recipe for a while and had a very ripe banana wasting away so I figured why not combine the two? This recipe is almost a cross between a cake and a cookie and is extremely moreish. I also found that they are best eaten straight away, which shouldn't be any problem because they are so tasty :).

After eating chocolate you feel godlike, as though you can conquer enemies, lead armies, 

entice lovers. ~Emily Luchetti

If you want to try them, you can get the recipe here. I added one crushed ripe banana to the batter but you could also add chocolate chips or anything else you'd like to have in them.

Peace & Love

xx

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