Iced Gems by Phay Shing Tan

Iced gems recipe

Recipe is adapted from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-KfcghmQcI for the biscuit dough and http://www.cakesandcatwalks.com/2013/07/recipe-home-made-iced-gems.html for the icing on the biscuits)

Ingredients:

Dough

200g plain flour

10g corn flour

100g cold butter

90g caster sugar

1 egg

1/2 Tbs golden syrup

Royal icing*

335g royal icing sugar (I used Wilton)

2 Tbs water plus extra as necessary

Gel food coloring

 Steps:

1. Place plain flour and corn flour in a large bowl and cut small pieces of cold butter into the flour using a small butter knife. Using only your finger tips and working quickly, rub in the butter and the flour until the whole mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.

2. Mix in the sugar using the butter knife until well combined.

3. Mix in the egg and golden syrup using the butter knife until well combined. Do not use your hands as the dough is very sticky.

4. Place the dough between 2 baking sheets or cling wrap and roll into a sheet that is about 5-7mm thick. Seal the edges of the dough with the baking sheets/ cling wrap before putting it in the fridge for at least 1 hour to let it harden.

5. Preheat the oven to 180°C.

6. Use a small round cookie cutter (1-2 cm in diameter, or any other shapes that you like) and cut out the dough into the desired shape. Place the dough on a baking tray lined with baking sheet. You may need to use a chopstick to push the dough out from the cutter and if the dough gets too soft and sticky to handle, place it back into the fridge for another 15-20 minutes. Alternatively, if you have freezer packs with flat surfaces, use them as your work surface and place the dough on top of it as you cut out the circles. This will ensure that the dough stays firm for a longer time. Always roll the dough between 2 sheets of baking sheet or cling wrap as you continue to reshape leftover dough and cut out more circles. If you find that the circles of dough have turned very soft, you may want to put the baking tray in the fridge for 10 minutes before putting it in the oven.

7. Bake at 180°C for 6-8 minutes or until the cookies are golden brown. Cool completely on a cooling rack before adding the icing sugar.

8. Sift the royal icing sugar into a bowl and add 2 Tbs of water. Use a spatula to mix well until it forms a smooth paste. Add water as necessary, 1/4 tsp at a time and mix well until you get a glossy icing that forms stiff peaks. You may use an electric mixer on low speed to make the icing but the icing was too thick for my handheld mixer to handle so I just worked with a spatula and it turned out fine.

9. Split the icing between the number of colors that you want. Use a toothpick to add a tiny drop of gel food coloring into each bowl of icing. Mix well using a spoon. Add only a tiny bit of coloring at a time to keep the colors a pastel shade.

10. Prepare a piping bag with a closed star nozzle (mine was not a standard sized nozzle but an 8-pointed star with point-point distance of about 8 mm) and spoon the icing into the bag. To pipe the traditional iced gem ruffle, hold the nozzle directly above the biscuit and apply pressure, allowing the icing to spread sideways as you slowly raise the nozzle upwards. To finish the ruffle, remove pressure from the bag and dip the nozzle down a little before pulling sharply upwards.

11. Leave the icing to set for a few hours or overnight until completely hard and dry. Store the biscuits in an airtight container**.

 *I was not comfortable with using raw egg whites to make the royal icing so I used store bought royal icing sugar. As this may not be readily available, you may refer to this link for the recipe to make the royal icing using the traditional method or meringue powder if you are not comfortable with using raw egg whites: http://www.joyofbaking.com/printpages/RoyalIcingprint.html

**My biscuits turned soft, especially the portions in contact with the icing due to moisture absorption from the icing. To rectify this, I placed the biscuits on a baking tray lined with baking sheet and dried them for 30 minutes in the oven preheated to about 110°C. The biscuits became crunchy again and remained so even after a few days :). Temperature and time for drying out the biscuits may vary depending on your oven and humidity when letting the icing set, but generally you should not set the temperature too high to prevent the icing from browning.