Ruth Clemens' Iced Biscuits & A Book Review

Recently I was lucky enough to win a copy of Ruth Clemens' new book 'The Busy Girls Guide To Cake Decorating' from Susan over at A Little Bit Of Heaven On A Plate. Naturally I was very excited about this and after seeing all of Ruth's wonderful creations on the first series of the Great British Bake Off, I couldn't wait to open it. This was also the first thing that I had delivered to my new flat and it was there waiting for me on the day we moved in. This just made me even more excited and deparate to get the unpacking done so I could sit down and read it in comfort. I should mention that even though I won the book I'm under no obligation to write a review, but I want to because I like the book.

The thing I like most about this book is the fact that Ruth gives you conversions for all the different size cake tins you could possibly have. Now I'm not completely rubbish at maths, so I could quite happily work out how much extra cake mix I would need to make to fill a larger tin. But now I don't need to because it's all there for me. Lazy? Perhaps, but this book is for the busy girl and I am definitely one of them. There are a handful of recipes for basic cakes which is fine, after all this book is focused on the decoration. Before the projects there is a section on decorating techniques, it's not overly detailed and I think at some point I will upgrade to a more detailed book. But for a beginner like me it's a good starting point with hints on piping (something I should pay attention to) and making sugar roses etc. I've avoided fancy decoration for a long time but my boyfriend has commisioned a fancy cake for his birthday this year as last year's was a bit of a disaster. I'll post more about that in a couple weeks when I've made it.

I've mentioned before that I'm not a big lover of fondant icing/ready roll/sugarpaste or whatever you want to call it, but that's not why I wanted this book. I wanted it so that I could decorate cakes beautifully for people who do like it. There are lots of ideas in this book, not all of them to my taste but there is plenty to inspire you to create your own designs. I really like the look of the butterfly cascade and hope that one day I can recreate it. I looked through this book with my boyfriend and as he loves fondant, I had to hold the book at arms length to stop him drooling all over it! The first and so far only thing that I've made from this book are the 'Pretty in Pink' biscuits on page 94. I used Ruth's recipe for vanilla sugar cookies on page 30 and used a 9cm cutter for the biscuits. This biscuit recipe is easy and it makes loads of biscuits, I might have rolled some of them a bit thin but I managed to get about 24 biscuits out of the dough. Having to roll the dough between sheets of greaseproof paper and then chill is a bit of a faff but the biscuits turned out well and didn't spread too much. I recut each of them after baking to get perfect circles and of course I ate the trimmings, who wouldn't? I made these biscuits for my boyfriend's Mum as it was her birthday last week and he suggested that I try something relatively simple from Ruth's book. Mainly so he could do 'quality control' before giving them to her. I gave her 16 biscuits in the end because I didn't have enough icing to cover all of them, plus I wanted to eat a couple of plain ones and they are delicious for something so simple. I did have one with all the icing on as well and it was a bit too sweet for me.

The original plan was to pipe decorating icing (i.e. icing sugar and water) over indentations I made with a flower cutter as per Ruth's design. I thought I would be able to do it. I was wrong.

Instead I ended up having to cover up the flower indentations with a crappy sunshine/sunflower design as my initial piping was terrible. Even with spare biscuits to practice on I still couldn't get it right. I should say that this is no fault of the book or Ruth's designs, they are beautiful and I feel ashamed to say that I attempted to copy one with this poor effort. I think the nozzle I was using may have been slightly too big, I don't have the specific one she recommends. Also I am just completely cack handed. I could never draw at school and even now I will avoid drawing anything unless it is absolutely necessary. I can't even control a pencil well enough to draw a decent stick man so I don't know why I thought I could do this.

I think my boyfriend's Mum liked them, at least if she didn't she's been polite enough not to tell me. You know what they say, practice makes perfect so I'm going to have to knuckle down and practice holding a piping bag and not using it to create a mess. I do think I did an OK job of salvaging the decoration, just!