Icing For Joy**

I put on my pretty new apron and felt inspired to do something domestic. So I looked again at the library book I’d picked up last week. I suspect the library of acquiring some new cookbooks – this one had only been borrowed twice before, and the Mary Berry I got in January was brand new too.

The author, Harriet Hastings, left her PR/Marketing career, after an epiphany whilst in New York, [!!] to start a biscuit company – figuring that they offered more scope than cupcakes or cookies.

And since 2007 her business has really taken off – Harrods, Fortnum's, Liberty, John Lewis…and stores in Paris and Dubai all stock her treats.

And now she has produced a book giving away all her recipes and many of her designs. They are truly amazing!

Full instructions on preparing the dough, cutting, baking and icing

Loads of styles and ideas – here is a set of 24 ‘Advent Calendar’ biscuits…

She recommends that you roll out the dough between sheets of cooking parchment, and use ‘rolling guides’ to get an even thickness. I used two chopping boards, which worked really well. [‘rolling guides’ are bits of square-section dowelling, although they do sound like inebriated members of a girls’ club!]

I cut various random shapes with my cutters, and baked them

And here, dear reader, is where things went pear-shaped. I made white royal icing for outlining, and pink thinner ‘flood’ icing for filling in the outlines. But I am afraid that I do not have a very steady hand for this sort of thing.

Maybe if I had just left them as un-iced butterflies in a tin like these…

[these are from Little Pong’s Blog. Little Pong says the instruction in the book about ‘keeps in tin for 4 months’ is only true if you do not open the tin in that time. If you do, they go stale]

I used the ‘Almond’ recipe from the book – but will do the ‘basic’ one next time I think – we couldn’t really taste the almond flavour.

Plain biscuits [24]

350g plain flour

100g self raising flour

125g granulated sugar

125g salted butter, diced

125g golden syrup

1 large egg, lightly beaten

· Sift flours, add sugars

· Add butter, rub in till breadcrumb consistency

· Make well in centre, mix in egg and syrup

· Mix till ball of dough forms

· Squash into two even discs, chill

· Roll between parchment 5mm

· Preheat to 170°C, bake 14-18 minutes

· Cool completely before icing

[for the ‘almond’ variation, replace self raising flour with 100g ground almonds]

But mine looked rather less professional than Ms Hastings efforts

Fortunately they tasted good!

Bob generously said that I should not worry, and there are many other things I can do, so it doesn’t matter if my icing is wobbly.

Other people will have to produce masterpieces like these

**the title is from line 5 of the chorus of ‘My Jesus, my Saviour’