[Sca-cooks] Reporting a successful (and quick) soltie

[Susan Laing]

Have been trying to get a chance to post this all week, so here goes.

Last Saturday night was the local (Willowby Vale - Ipswish, Queensland,
Australia) Red & White Valetines feast. I was requested by the Feast Steward
to pre-make about 100 heart shaped sweet biscuits for a Children's A&S
activity where the kids were to decorate them for afternoon tea at the
tourney. The biscuits were a basic vanila sugar recipe - very OOP but tasty.

Since I was making these on the Friday night (along with about a squillion
Almond biscuits (nb - periood recipe) for the adults afternoon tea) I
decided to make extra and play with a decorating idea that I saw on Olwen's
webpage (Olwen gave me a few pointers but explained that she hadn't actually
made the stenciled biscuits [sorry - can't find the e that gives the
creators names - Olwen info please :-)]

Okay - so I made the biscuits by rolling out the biscuit dough and cutting
it into Heart shapes using a 2" cutter (the biscuits spread out while baking
to finished size of about 2.5"). Baked for prescribed time, allowed to cool
a bit while gathering together the powered colours, paint brush (I used a
small stubby "shading" brush - bristles about 5cm wide), my stencil which
was one of those green plastic ones they use for wall borders with 3 groups
of roses on it and I used only one rose which was just under 2" in width
which filled the biscuit space nicely).

Placed practice biscuit on plate, positioned stencil over biscuit (centering
it evenly); applied colour to brush (a little goes a long way!) and started
stipling the colour on to the biscuit parts.  The colour applied fairly
evenly and didn't come off (although you have to be a bit careful just after
applying it or you can smudge it). The Butter in the biscuits acted as a
binder with the paint.

I then made up about 30 of them in two shades of red for the high tables
dessert presentation.

The next evening at the event I discovered that about 30 of the biscuits
weren't used for the children's event and started to quickly stencil them up
- made a nice addition to the dessert spread for the rest of the attendees
(NB - even though the biscuits were cold the colour still took well)

Summing up - it's quick, easy - (I had a 6 year old help me the last 4
biscuits and he had no trouble) and looks very effective! - we only used one
colour per biscuit as the stencil was too large to include the leaves & stem
but I'll be hunting about for some smaller stencils soon so I can try a 2 &
3 colour effect

Gracious thanks to Olwen & the Bright Hills Cooks Guild for showing the way
(yet again!)

Mari

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