Iced Gems II 糖霜饼干 II

Following the success of the Iced Gems that I made last week, I decided to make another batch using a different recipe from Cherry on a Cake. I have some royal icing left anyway, and I had promised my kiddo to let him try on it.

I found this biscuit recipe much easier to handle than the one I used earlier. The dough is pliable but not sticky, making it so much easier to stamp the biscuits and best of all, I didn't even need to chill the dough. However, the biscuit would rise and lose its shape a little during baking because baking powder is used.

This biscuit is more rustic, dry and plain, and pretty tasteless since no sugar is added. So in fact, it matched the sugary icing really well. Now I couldn't decide which recipe I prefer, the other is more buttery and fragrant, whereas this is more rustic. I guess this recipe would be easier for beginners who are keen to make iced gems.

Ingredients used were slightly different. Plain flour, baking powder, salt, butter and milk (previous recipe used plain flour, butter, sugar, egg and golden syrup).

Method is pretty much the same as previous recipe, except that the dough could be used immediately without chilling at all. Stamping the biscuit dough was so much easier and faster. But baking time was slightly longer in order to fully cook the dough.

Iced Gems 糖霜饼干
(yields about 98-100 biscuits, recipe adapted from Cherry on a Cake)

Biscuit recipe

•  115g plain flour
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 40g unsalted butter, cold and cubed
• 45g milk (up to 70g if needed)

1. Sift plain flour, baking powder and salt together. Set aside.
2. Add cold cubed unsalted butter into the flour mixture, use the fingers to press the butter cubes into the flour until it resembles coarse sand.
3. Add milk little by little and mix the dough using spatula till smooth. Add more milk if dough is too dry.
4. Roll the dough into 3mm thickness and stamp the dough into desired shapes.
5. Place the biscuit dough on a baking tray lined with baking paper/silpat mat. Bake at 180 degree celsius (fan mode) for 15 minutes till golden brown. Let the biscuits cool down completely before piping the icing.

*Please refer to my previous post on royal icing recipe.

I let the kiddo try stamping the dough and piping the icing and he had fun especially the icing part. And he couldn't stop licking the icing and munching on the biscuits!