I had a lot of pink buttercream left over from my mini rosette vanilla cupcakes. So I came up with these to use it up. My son helped my roll and cut out the dough, but the decorating needed my steady hands (I gave him his own to go mad on!)

Ingredients (makes 12 – 15 biscuits depending on the size of your cutter)

• 200g self raising flour
• 100 g caster sugar
• 100 g butter/margarine
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 1 tsp caramel flavouring (this gives the dough a very subtle flavour. Add more if you would like a stronger taste).

Method

• Put the flour, sugar and butter in a bowl and rub the ingredients together using your fingers.
• Add the beaten egg and flavouring and mix (using a spoon this time!) until you have a soft, sticky dough.
• I chilled the dough for a few hours, although you could use it straight away.
• Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees C. Prepare two baking trays by either greasing them or using greaseproof paper (I’m a fan of paper!).
• Roll out the dough to the thickness you like (about 0.5 cm works well) and use a round cutter to get the circles. Alternatively, you could roll the dough into small balls and then flatten them. This dough is sticky and you’ll need quite a lot of flour to stop it sticking to the board, your rolling pin and cutter.
• Put your biscuits on your trays and bake for 10-12 minutes. Keep an eye on them because they brown quickly towards the end. Cool on a wire rack.
• The biscuits are quite light and delicious when still warm from the oven. However, when cold, I think they do need some kind of icing to complete the flavour.

From left to right: small leaf, shell and medium writer.

Decorating

• It’s difficult to give quantities for making the buttercream as it was leftover from my last bake. However, I’d guess you’ll need 40 g of butter/margarine and 80 g icing sugar. If the buttercream seems very stiff once you’ve blended them together, add half a tsp of milk to make the buttercream easier to pipe. You can always leave it in the fridge for a while to encourage it to firm up before you use it.
• I used 3 different piping nozzles: small leaf (no. 17), shell (no. 12) and small round (aka writer no. 2).
• I used the writer nozzle to pipe the buttercream smiles, noses and cheeks. I used shop-bought black writing icing to draw on the eyes.

Then I used the leaf nozzle to create one style of hair. Waves!

Then I switched to my other piping bag with the shell nozzle. Crimped hair is back!

Finishing touches

• I used sugar stars and balls for hair decorations and more shop-bought writing icing to give some of the faces eyebrows and glasses. Some also have hair bows and ear-rings.

I wish I could send you all one over the internet… They brightened up my day! 🙂

© Claire Huston / Art and Soul