Decorating biscuits II

Having baked the biscuits the day before, it was now time to decorate them. I used the The Contemporary Cake Decorating Bible as inspiration for the different techniques.

I gathered various decorating ingredients though didn't end up using them all. The Writing Icing tasted a bit weird (well, it was out of date!) and the cherries just didn't work.

The biscuits were given a thin glaze of boiled apricot jam so that the icing would stick. The first biscuits had quite a thick layer of icing but I got better at rolling it more thinly. After several frustrating incidents, I also got better at putting down more icing sugar so that the icing didn't stick to the board!

These butterflies were decorated using small metal cutters but the small flower was a plunger cutter.

With the large cupcakes, I did some piping using an ancient syringe contraption of my Mum's. It was really hard work pressing down the plunger and my thumb was still numb several days later!

The pink pattern on the left cupcake was made using one of the small plastic candle holders used for birthday cakes.

The idea for the button on the bottom left cupcake came from the book. The top part of the middle biscuit had a combination of piping and icing with hundreds and thousands kneaded into it.

I found it harder to come up with ideas for the teapots than the other shapes but was pleased with the results. The flower teapot has been the favourite biscuit of the friends I've shown.

 

And a last look at them all together. I'm really proud of my first attempt at biscuit decorating! And the added bonus is that they tasted great too! Definitely something to try again in the future.

PS You may have noticed that the star biscuits in my previous post haven't made an appearance. They barely made it past the decorating stage before being consumed for research purposes.