Iced Sugar Biscuits – a few tips

For Little OL’s party I also made some iced rainbow sugar biscuits. Cupcake Mummy suggested a do a tutorial, but I won’t.  I don’t have the time or patience to take photos of the process and there are already tutorials on the internet that explain it very well – that is how I learnt.  Also, I don’t feel like I have enough experience to “teach” somebody else how to do this, I am also just starting out and learing as I go.

Here is a link to a blog that has very good tutorials and tips.  I use her as my “go to” most of the time – Sweetopia

EDITED – I don’t know how I forgot to add this link – her tutorials are also fantastic!  The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle

I will however give some pointers that I have picked up that make it easier for me.  My first one is that I don’t use piping bags; I have found that ziplock freezer bags work the best for me. They are cheaper, I always have them in the house, and because they close at the top my hands don’t get covered in icing, which no matter how I tried to fold the other bags always seemed to happen.  If I am doing delicate work or the outline then I will use a nozzle if not, if I am just doing the flood work (middle part) then I will just cut a tiny bit of the corner off and use it like that.  If you don’t have the nozzles (or enough nozzles) you could just be very careful and cut a very small bit off the corner. I have done that and it has worked.  Then, don’t over fill your bags; it is much easier to work with smaller amounts in the bag and just refill.

Zip bags

If I am working with a few colours I will keep the nozzles face down resting on a damp cloth (I just use paper towel.  Don’t let it get too wet or it will affect the icing in the nozzle, but by having it just damp the icing doesn’t harden while you are using a different colour.

Damp kitchen towel

The other things that I keep nearby are a damp kitchen towel, to wipe the ends of the nozzles when necessary and a few toothpicks.  If you get a bubble in the icing prick it while still very wet and it won’t leave a small hole.

a damp cloth at hand

I have tried making Royal Icing using an egg substitute and with real eggs.  The taste was pretty much the same, however I find that the egg substitute clogs the nozzle more than real eggs. This is a real pain in the butt so now I use real eggs (for these biscuits I used THIS recipe – the one at the bottom of the post using eggs).  In America they use meringue powder, but I have not find it here. The egg substitute I used was Actiwhite and I found it at the Baking Tin in PE.

Rainbow colours

On all the tutorials they talk about the 10 second rule, what they mean is that if you drag a knife through the Royal Icing it should take 10 seconds for icing to be smooth again. For delicate work I use more like a 15 to 20 second rule.  For the flood work 10 secs or a bit less if fine.  Sometimes for basic shapes, like squares or circle I will use 10 seconds for both and the pipe the outline and fill it all at the same time. This way you do not see the outline line, but it still seems to hold its shape.

I have a couple of books that I use and I always use the biscuit recipe from The Biscuiteers book but mostly if I need advice or help, I Google it.  All my answers seem to be there.

Good luck and if you have any great pointers or tips to make my life easier when icing biscuits, please feel free to share!

I found an example of rainbow biscuits HERE and a tutorial.  I used that to make Little OL’s birthday biscuits.  I am really happy with the way they turned out, but I wish I had double checked it before I started.  I had forgotten that she iced all her biscuits white before putting on the colours.  But oh well.  I like them anyway.

Rainbow Biscuits

A hand cut biscuit, using a template I made.