I Do Cookies

A few months ago I spotted some bride and groom cookie cutters and just had to have them. I first used them for my Royal Wedding Tea Party but the real reason I bought them is cos my sister is getting married soon and so I used them to make cookies for the hen night. I used the vanilla biscuit recipe from The Great British Book of Baking (tie in with BBC2's Great British Bake Off) and I must say they were rather tasty!

I also made some heart shapes just to mix it up a bit.

Decorating these cookies was a challenge. Royal icing is not my friend so I decided to steer clear of that. Last time I made a sugar icing it didn't dry out and they all stuck together. Fondant icing is too much effort for a few cookies. So, I thought I'd be smart and use some 'ready to use' icing from Sainsbury's and I bought a pink tube and a white tube of Silver Spoon Designer Icing.

I've never seen this kind of icing before and am quite impressed to see it comes with three nozzles!

Normally I wouldn't 'cheat' and would make the icing myself, but sometimes life is too short for the aggro icing causes me. So I was feeling quite smug about it all as I was coming home from the shop. 

Long story short, this icing is CRAP. I had to squeeze the tube so hard I instantly had cramp and maintaining the pressure is just not possible. The icing comes out really thick and gunky and is almost impossible to control. I did a few test runs with the star nozzle and the stupid icing wouldn't stay put when I tried to take the nozzle away.

 

I'm pretty nifty with an icing bag so I was unimpressed at how difficult this stupid tube is to use. I decided maybe it was because the icing was too cold, so popped it in some hot water to see if that loosened it up. WRONG. This just intensified the not-quite-set jelly consistency. At this point I was inventing some new swear words and cursing the stupid idea of cutting corners with shop bought icing. I thought the white tube might be different but alas it was the same crapola as the pink stuff...

Crappy icing

So, I ditched the silver spoon crap and dug out some 'icing pens' from my supply box and got to work. Ahh, much better!

See how much fatter the pink stuff is?

The end result was actually quite good, and I'm most impressed at my freehand bow ties on the grooms. I'm rubbish at drawing but they came out quite well. (Altho my mum thought the grooms were penguins...)

 

The cookies were scoffed at the hen night and everyone asked about the recipe. We also had some adorable cupcakes courtesy of one of the other bridesmaids. These were really good!