FESTIVE FASHION BISCUITS

Forget about cupcakes or macaroons, right now my favourite baking trend has to be the cute fashion biscuits which have started filtering through Instagram and the fashion world.

Instead of Christmas cookies this year, I decided to create my own stylish biscuits for the festive season. I finally sourced my shoe and handbag biscuit cutters in Tesco’s Silverburnstore a few weeks ago and have been planning to use them ever since. What better time to create glorious edible fashion than Christmas?! I originally was going to stick to green, red and gold but could not resist making them a bit more girly when I found pink and purple glitter icing pens (7 year old me would be so proud right now).

I followed a recipe from a baking book I received as a gift a few years ago, Hamlyn’s 200 Christmas Recipes. I thought you may like to create your own fashion biscuits, so here’s a little step-by-step guide in how I created them. I’m in no way a baking expert so the steps are a little basic, I will admit!

SPICY GINGERBREAD INGREDIENTS

125g (4oz) unsalted butter(softened)

75g (3oz) light brown sugar

1 egg (beaten)

5 tablespoons black treacle

375g (12oz) self raising flour

1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger

METHOD

After measuring out the ingredients, start by beating the butter and sugar together until it is creamy. Then, stir in the egg and black treacle.

TOP TIP: to make the black treacle easier to scoop in, dip a spoon into just boiled water – the heat helps soften the treacle.

Sift in the flour and ground ginger, stirring to form a stuff paste.

Turn out the dough on to a lightly floured work surface and knead lightly until smooth.

Wrap and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before rolling.

After chilling, I split the gingerbread dough into 4 sections to make it easier to roll out. Once rolled, I cut out the all important handbags and shoes. I decided to cut a hole in the shoes and handbags as I wanted to be able to make some of the biscuits into tree decorations (lack of technical aspect, but I used a large straw to cut these out, as I said – I’m no professional baker!)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees (350F), Gas Mark 4. Place the cut out gingerbread onto a greased baking tray and cook for 15 minutes or until the dough has risen slightly and is darkening at the edges. Cool on a wire rack.

DECORATING

I decided to wait until the morning to decorate my biscuits to give them time to cool (and to give me time to sleep, I should have maybe made these before 10pm!)

As I said earlier, I decided to go a bit girly with lots of pink and sparkles to decorate my shoes and handbags. I do need to apologize for not taking as many pictures of my decorating process, but lets just say there looked like there had been an icing sugar storm in my kitchen and truthfully I was a bit worried for my camera’s life if I had kept snapping away! If you want to use the products I did, here they are;

DIY DECORATING KIT
Dr. Oetker Regal-Ice Ready to Roll White Icing
Icing Sugar
Pink Glimmer Sugar
Silver Balls
Dr. Oetker Glitter Icing Pens (pack of 4)
Colour Icing Pens (not pictured)
Black Ready to Roll Icing (not pictured)

To give myself a white background to work from on each of the biscuits, all I did was roll out white regal icing. Dust the surface with icing sugar before rolling it out and, to make sure it really doesn’t stick, I also covered the rolling pin in icing sugar too.

To get the right shape, I just used the same cutters to cut out the handbag and shoe shapes and used the icing pens as a glue to stick the rolled icing onto the gingerbread.

I then got a little creative, using the glitter icing pens to draw the outlines of the shoes and handbags and also used the icing to stick on the glitter sprinkles and silver balls. I love the Chanel-esque biscuit which was made using ready to roll regal icing in black then criss-crossing with a black icing pen. Really, you can get as creative as you like or you could even just draw the outline if you don’t want as much detail.

You can make these all year round, but to help with the festive-feel, I tied ribbon through some of the biscuits to make cute (and edible) tree decorations. Seeing as fashion biscuits are so popular, they wold also make fabulous Christmas presents for any fashionistas in your life. I used a little gift box, some nice tissue paper and tied a ribbon around to give a really simple, but effective biscuit gift box with a stylish twist. They make a good festive treat on a Christmas plate too for any guests you have coming around! (Or, you could just make them and eat them yourself..)