Decorated biscuits: using stencils

Two occasions: My great-niece's Georgina's 1st birthday party as well as Mother's Day....so some heart shaped biscuits were going to be fitting on both accounts.

Photo by Sarah Ryan

I usually use gingerbread biscuits for decorating as they keep really well, but this time I used a vanilla shortbread (they'd be eaten pretty quickly and the kids would like vanilla biscuits better, I reasoned...)

I use a very buttery recipe which is quite soft so I rolled the dough out between glad bake and cut out the hearts while still on the paper. Then I removed the excess dough from around the shapes and transferred paper and all on to the tray. With no moving, lifting or stretching of the uncooked dough, each heart kept its shape perfectly.

                                              Photo by Sarah Ryan                                            Photo by Sarah Ryan
After the biscuits were cooked and cooled, I rolled out pink fondant icing and made up a batch of royal icing. I had a pack of 3 heart shaped stencils, each with a different design. I placed one stencil on the fondant and spread royal icing over, then scraped the excess off. Then it was just a matter of lifting the stencil off.

                                               Photo by Sarah Ryan                                            Photo by Sarah Ryan
 Then I placed the same heart cutter used for the biscuits to cut out the heart shape from the icing, and spread the biscuit with some edible glue (from the cake decorating shop). Then it was just a case of putting the icing on top of the biscuit!

 

               Photo by Sarah Ryan                                   Photo by Sarah Ryan                            Photo by Sarah Ryan

And then plate up...that's all there is to it.

Photo by Sarah Ryan

Happy 1st birthday Georgina and Happy Mother's Day, Mum!