The main appeal with these is the decoration, so if you don't fancy making your biscuits from scratch as I did then using shop bought would suffice as an alternative (I'm not Mary Berry - I'm not going to give you a death stare for not making them yourself…).
Making and decorating a batch of these would be the perfect Christmas family activity, so grab your children / sisters / brothers / neighbours / child-like friends, stick on a Christmas CD and have fun with a bag of marshmallows and a pack of writing icing pens. If this doesn't get you feeling festive, then I don't know what will!
It's worth mentioning a bit of an explanation into the slight change in format for my blog posts for the rest of the week. Yesterday I had an absolute disaster on the camera front, and my SD card containing quite literally hundreds of pictures of Christmas bakes from the last few days spazzed out and died, leaving all my pictures trapped on it with no way to access them. After several hours of panicking and my Dad frantically trying to save it for me, I had to accept that they're gone and there's nothing I can do about it.
As a result, I have no photos of any of my baking this week. I am absolutely gutted. I spent so long perfecting the photos, setting up backgrounds, experimenting with different lighting and using a brand new selection of serving plates all to create an effect I loved and thought would look interesting and different for you all to enjoy. I take great pride in photographing every stage of the baking process - prolonging my time in the kitchen significantly - as I think it makes following a recipe an awful lot easier if you can see how it's supposed to look as you're going along. Sadly, for the next few days there will be no such pictures.
Luckily, at the time of the disaster yesterday there were still a couple of each of the bakes left rattling around in numerous tins or taking up space nestled in the fridge. For the next few days my baking posts will only consist of the recipes and then quick photographs of what's left of the final bakes. I'll try my best to outline in the text exactly how many I made and to describe the process in more detail than I would usually. However, without a visual aid I'm a little concerned it might be boring and potentially confusing if the instructions are all over the place! If you have any questions or if anything's not abundantly clear then please don't hesitate to leave me a comment or send me a tweet and I will do my best to help.
I can only apologise, but I guarantee I am more upset and frustrated than anyone reading this!
Now that's cleared up, on to the snowmen! I saw this and immediately knew I had to make them: the finished product is so ridiculously cute it's hard not to fall in love with them and giving them away is insanely hard as they look too adorable to eat! The original recipe can be found on the Lakeland website here, but it's also below with my notes.
Ingredients:
For the biscuits:
125g butter, softened
125g caster sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g plain flour, plus a little for dusting
2 tbsp milk
To decorate:
A little icing sugar, for dusting
250g White Ready to Roll Icing
25g seedless raspberry jam (any flavour jam works too)
12 white marshmallows
Ready to Roll Icing, various colours
Writing Icing Pens (blue, red, yellow and green)
Silver balls
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180C / Gas 4 and line two baking trays with baking parchment.
If you're using shop bought biscuits, don't switch on the oven (but feel free to pass Go and collect £200…) and skip down 3 paragraphs to the icing stage!
In a large bowl, mix the butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolk and vanilla extract. Sieve the flour into the bowl and add enough milk to make a soft dough. Bring the mixture together with your hands then lightly knead until smooth. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for at least 15 minutes.
On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to roughly 5mm thick. Cut out 10 circles with a 9cm cookie cutter. Place on the baking trays and bake for 18 minutes or until golden. Set aside for 10 minutes then transfer the biscuits to a wire rack to cool completely.
On a surface lightly dusted with icing sugar, roll out the white icing to 3mm thick. Cut out 10 circles with a 10cm cookie cutter. I didn't think this would be big enough to go up and over the marshmallow, but it really is. Which ever size cutter you use for the biscuit, make sure the icing is 1cm bigger in diameter.
Spread half a teaspoon of jam in the centre of each biscuit, leaving a 1cm gap around the edge. Place a marshmallow on top of each biscuit, slightly off-centre. Place the icing onto each biscuit and smooth it over the marshmallow with your hands. I found it easier to make sure it's neat around the marshmallow and carefully ease the icing out from there, otherwise it can crack horizontally in the middle of the marshmallow.
At this stage my Dad appeared and insisted on helping me out (I told you it was family friendly!) so all snowman scarves are his doing! To make little scarves, roll out the coloured ready to roll icing on a surface lightly dusted with icing sugar to a thickness of 3mm. If you don't want to buy other colours specially, then just add food colouring to the white ready to roll icing and knead it in until an even colour (which is what I did). Cut out curvy scarf shapes with a sharp knife - if it helps, use a spare marshmallow as a guide for the curve. Stick the scarves to the snowmen with a dab of boiled, cooled water.
Next, mould coloured icing into 12 little hats and stick on with more water.
Complete the snowmen by drawing on buttons, eyes and mouths using the writing icing pens. Stick on a silver ball for the nose (or you could be fancy and make a carrot). I used a white icing pen as glue here and it looked so neat: I'd definitely recommend finding a set with a white pen!
Let the icing set then place the biscuits into gift boxes or bags.
THESE ARE SO CUTE IT HURTS.
I was so overcome with the cuteness that I sent a quick picture of my 10 biscuits to my best friend, so here they are in all their completed, burry and shadowy glory!
Yesterday morning there were all 10, but my Dad took a tin of them to work at lunchtime so following The Great SD Card Disaster of December 9th 2014 I only had 4 left to photograph (in the evening, with extremely poor light). Sorry!
I'm so surprised at how well these turned out: decorating is not my forte by any stretch of the imagination, but obviously if I take my time it's not too bad! The hats aren't fantastic - with hindsight they're a really, really weird shape - but I have no idea what other shape to go for with headwear.
There's something very satisfying about making something so simple but that looks so good, so I guarantee children will love these!
I actually made a double batch of biscuits because I didn't trust the recipe's sizes at all, so ended up with another 12 smaller biscuits too. It turns out my Dad enjoyed helping with the scarves so much I came back after photographing my 10 to find he'd taken it upon himself to make snowmen with the remaining icing, unused marshmallows and the rest of the biscuits. They were more wacky - think berets at jaunty angles, random splodges of green hair and not necessarily white snow - but I think they're cute! He had a very positive reaction from everyone at work, so I only had 2 left to show you by yesterday evening!
The only issue people had with these was the size - the biscuits themselves are great, but with all the icing it's just a sugar overload. In the future I'd consider making them smaller, and maybe adding more jam - the flavour breaks up all the sugar and isn't just there as a form of edible glue.
So, what do you think?! Do let me know if you make these and make sure you send me a picture!
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