I went to visit some friends in Dublin the weekend before
Christmas to give out some presents, and for each friend I made something quite
small, more of a token than anything else. I thought I'd make one of my friends
a small handful of decorated gingerbread stars, in the spirit of the season.
These stars use the same recipe as the gingerbread houses, which is a wheat- and egg free recipe for gingerbread, but I used royal
icing to decorate them, which makes them not completely egg free. Because I don't really like having egg yolks left over
from separating eggs for royal icing, I bought some instant royal icing, which
does the job. It's not ideal, because it starts setting pretty much as soon as
you make it, meaning that each biscuit you ice the icing gets firmer. But I
digress.
I used red and white because I think it's a nice Christmassy combination of colours, and it also means I only had to divide it in two and colour one half, which makes it way less fussy. I piped them with a simple snowflake design, which uses the trick of feathering to add interest to the snowflake arms.
To make the snowflake design, pipe the outline of the
star about an eighth of an inch (3 millimetres) from the edge of the biscuit,
then fill in to make the base. While the base is still wet, pipe a line of the
accent colour from the middle of the star up the centre of each arm; pipe two
little lines going across each long line. Using a cocktail stick, drag through
the middle of each long line from the tips of the arms to the centre. The
result can be seen in the photographs.
Leave to set, exposed to the air,
for at least 6 hours, overnight is best. You can use any colour combination you like, and these can be eaten any time of year really!
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