Get stuck in Iced Biscuits

Good evening all

This is a great little recipe for the kids or anyone who enjoys a good muck around with food. This recipe involves mess, mischief and mucking about in the kitchen.

It is a hands-on, relaxed and fun recipe. The ingredients that you will be wanting to get into the house are;

This is a BBC Good Food Recipe and is plain, so you might want to add lemon or orange zest to it. This will give it more flavour. I liked it though, as I feel with desserts these days, there is so much flavour and various stuff going on in them, that sometimes it is just lovely to have something simple and delicious. The icing is perfect on these though, as it gives that little bit of sweetness that balances it.

Ingredients:

- 100g Butter, room temperature and soft enough to squish
- 100g Caster Sugar
- 1 Egg
- 275g Plain Flour
- 1 tsp Vanilla

Method:

- Chuck the butter and sugar into a bowl and mix until they are combined, light and fluffy.

- Crack the egg into a bowl (this works better in two ways. 1- you won't get any shell into the mix if you accidentally crack it weird. And 2- it helps if you whisk the egg a little before adding it to the sugar/butter mix.

- Add the vanilla and give this a little mix as well.

- Finally chuck in the flour and mix this until it forms a soft dough consistency. This is the stage where you can take the opportunity to get stuck in and squish and squelch the dough around. Have a good muck about with it!

- Wrap the dough in some cling of the film and chill in the fridge for around an hour to cool and firm up a bit.

- Once chilled, roll out the dough to the thickness of a £1 coin and cut out your desired shape.

- Bake these at 190 C in a fan assisted oven for 10 minutes, or until they are golden brown and look baked. If you aren't sure, check the bottom of them, and if they are browned, they are done!

- Take out of the oven and allow to cool and harden on a cooling rack until completely cooled.

Icing:

- Put around 250g of Icing Sugar into a two bowls. (250g in each bowl) and add enough water to make a thick paste, thick enough to hold its shape, but not so thick that it can't be manipulated.

- Add any colours that you want to make them unique to you and your likes.

- Using a piping bag, a chopstick and toothpick, decorate these little biscuits!

And that is it! They are done. Really simple and lovely little treat to have on a quiet and cold evening.

You can add lemon, lime or orange zest to these to make them more special and interesting in terms of flavour and textures. You could even sprinkle them with a little sugar before baking as that would make them a little sweeter. Whatever you want to do, these are diverse and versatile and that is the best thing. You can tailor them to you.

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