Iced Ginger Biscuits | Bake Off Bake Along

Well that was quite the final. That was definitely the result I was hoping for as well, Sophie had been consistently good throughout most challenges and she did have a great showstopper. So I’m happy she picked up the win.

I successfully avoided that dreaded spoiler all day too, so bonus that it remained a complete surprise. 

I have to admit, when I was watching it, I felt a bit disappointed in the signature and technical challenge choices. Bread and iced cookies just didn't feel like big final worthy challenges.

How wrong I was.

This weekend, I had about 20 iced cookies to make for my friends baby shower and for that reason, I chose to make iced ginger cookies for the challenge this week. Mainly because I needed a trial run icing some cookies and actually making the royal icing, so this seemed to fit the bill.

First off, I want to say that I have never made royal icing before, nor have I ever really tried to ice biscuits properly, other than a dollop of standard icing on top of a ginger biscuit. I prefer the rustic look.

These cookies didn’t exactly turn out how I was hoping they would. Icing them was a lot trickier than I first imagined and I’ve got a whole lot more respect for the final 3 bakers for actually getting through that icing. I don't think I had the slimmest nozzle, so that was definitely an issue as well. 

I felt a lot like Kate when icing these, my mindset was just “I’m not looking at anything else until these bloody cookies are iced and finished”

It was a relief when they were done and I’m pleased to say, my baby shower cookies were a much bigger success and a lot neater.

Prue’s patterns seemed like a mind trip. How on earth does one person ice such an intricate criss-cross design on a square biscuit?? I didn’t get mine looking like hers in the slightest so just freestyled them a bit and did them my way. It kinda worked. I guess.

I used Prue's Ginger Biscuit recipe and followed this recipe for royal icing (which uses dried egg powder instead of egg whites).

Overall, the biscuits tasted delicious and the icing was perfectly crisp and crunchy. Everything you want in an iced biscuit really. My 2 year old nephew also really enjoyed cutting out the shapes with me too, and then got too carried away with his own cutters, which is why there aren’t too many of my shapes. He also pinched a few extra ‘egg’ shapes, as he liked to call them.

I think this year’s #bakeoffbakealong was definitely full of bigger successes for me this year. I had my fair share of crappy bakes last year and dough that didn’t rise, so I’m pretty happy with this year’s results. My favourites have definitely been the banana caramel cake, biscoff choux buns and funfetti sandwich cookies.

The challenges have definitely tested me and my skills. Or lack of where icing is concerned. But that’s the whole point of taking part, so I’m glad I did and thank you Amanda for hosting again!

I’m gonna be off mastering this icing stuff now...