Enjoy biscuits? Like beetles? Then you’ll love our iced beetle biscuits! We have designed ours to look like ladybirds, but you can decorate yours in any way you like. If you haven’t got time to bake the biscuits you could buy some and decorate them.
You will need:
- Round biscuit cutter
- Baking tray – lightly greased or with baking paper
- Mixing bowl
- Rolling pin
- Wooden spoon
- teaspoon
- A work surface sprinkled with flour
- A wire rack to cool the biscuits
- Oven pre-heated to 190oC (170oC if its a fan oven)
- Oven gloves
- A grown-up assistant
Ingredients:
- 100g butter – take it out of the fridge to soften it
- 225g self-raising flour
- 80g caster sugar
- 1 large egg, beaten
- 1 tablespoon of milk
- 3 drops of vanilla extract
To make the icing:
- 100g icing sugar
- 1 tablespoon of lemon juice (use water if you haven’t got juice)
- Food colouring – colours of your choice
How to make the biscuits:
- Wash your hands. Make sure your assistant washes theirs too.
- Lightly grease the baking tray.
- In the mixing bowl, rub the butter into the flour using your fingertips. Keep going until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.
- Add the sugar, beaten egg, milk and vanilla extract.
- Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. You can use the spoon to start but as the dough forms you will probably find it easier to use your hands to shape it into a ball.
- Using the rolling pin, roll out the dough on the floured work surface until it is spread out in a thin layer.
- Cut out biscuit shapes from the dough and put them on the baking tray.
- Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes. Ask your assistant to take them out when they are golden brown.
- Cool the biscuits on the wire rack. watch that your assistant doesn’t try to snaffle the warm biscuits!
How to make the icing:
While the biscuits are cooling, mix the icing ingredients. The icing needs to be liquid but not so runny that it runs off the biscuit when you put it on. If it’s too runny, add a bit more icing sugar. If its too stiff, add a drop of water. Divide your icing between bowls, one for each colour you are using. For the biscuits in the picture, we used red and violet and also kept some white icing. Add a drop of food colour to each bowl and mix it in. When the biscuits are cool, use the teaspoon to spoon a little icing onto each biscuit, then smooth it on with the back of the spoon. You can use a cocktail stick to spread out small amounts of icing.
Top tip: if you have a piping bag, you can stop the colours mixing into each other, pipe the outline of the parts of your beetle, let that icing dry, then fill in with more liquid icing.
We hope you enjoy your biscuits! Why not send us a picture of your design for our Photo Gallery?
Crunchy on the outside 
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