Christmas Tree Biscuits

I think I originally saw this idea on the Lakeland website. The idea is that using varying sizes of star cutters, you layer them up, ice them, and they will resemble a Christmas tree! Now, being a poor student, I tried ebay for a cheaper alternative, and got a set of 6 star cutters for around £3. Here's a set on Amazon that are similiar to the ones I used - Star cookie cutters.

 For the biscuit, I used the same recipe I used in the dinosaur biscuit post. Then I began to cut the stars for my biscuits. Now, I'd decided to give each of my friends one for Christmas, so I had to make 8. 8 Christmas trees at 11 biscuits each equals a lot of biscuits to bake and ice! So I reduced my Christmas trees down to 7 biscuits, and hoped that they still retained the tree look, rather than a bush.

I have to admit, I iced these rather sloppily as it was 11pm and I was ready for my bed! Of course, this did not affect the taste and my friends didn't seem to mind either.

I also forgot to take any photos until I'd bagged them - so I'm afraid we'll have to make do with the bagged product, but I think you can still see the gist of the idea.

So, there's the first of my Christmas baking! Now, it's off to the wonderland of revision...

My first time icing cupcakes.

So, my icing nozzles arrived today so I thought I'd give them a whirl! I have iced once using an icing bag on a gingerbread house for Christmas last year, but it came out more of a bold line of icing along the edges than anything else.

First of all I whipped up some cake batter.




Here they are just out of the oven.



After waiting for them to cool, I used the frosting recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook which I received for Christmas. I've done quite a few recipes out of there including the Apple Pie and Mississippi Mud Pie which were lovely. I decided on some vanilla frosting - 80g of unsalted butter at room temp, mixed with 250g of icing sugar with some vanilla extract and between 10ml-25ml of milk. I had to add a little extra icing sugar to get mine to the right consistancy so be careful when adding the milk.

After filling my icing bag, I went for it. I started anticlockwise and let the icing flow round. Here's my first attempt!


I went a little bit wobbly on the inside ring but not bad, I think!

My second time was a little steadier and I forgot to take a photo before I put sprinkles on.



I tried a couple of the other nozzles I had received, but mostly stuck to the the first one as I think I liked it the best. I made a simple butterfly cake as well, just to see what the nozzle would produce like and it was a little neater than 'dump a spoonful on' method. I also added some Green and Blacks cocoa to the frosting mixture to make some chocolate icing.








The vanilla one was used what was described as a "leaf" nozzle, I liked the effect. The chocolate one completely failed so I just smoothed it over with a knife and topped with some sprinkles.



I think it went okay for my first attempt and I intend to try again some time next week!

Purchases.

After browsing the internet the other day I found a couple of cute things I had to purchase. First of all I ordered a starter icing set with 6 various nozzles and a couple of icing bags. My next project is going to be learning how to ice cakes. Until now my method has been to dump a spoonful of buttercream on the cake and pronounce them finished, so it might be a bit of a challenge!

The second purchase is more of a silly one. We're awfully fond of dinosaurs and when I saw these sprinkles I just had to get them.
[Image from www.cakescookiesandcraftsshop.co.uk]

So, fingers crossed, soon my lovely iced cakes will be littered with dinosaurs!