Iced Gems

As a kid, one of my FAVOURITE shops to go to is what I called the "100grams shop".

It's a shop which sells all manner of snacks and sweets by weight. The shop would be packed full of metal, airtight containers to keep the biscuits fresh and they'd also have plastic bins filled with preserved fruit and lollies. (And now we know why I was a tubby child)

I was lucky enough to relive this memory when I was last in Singapore at Biscuit King in Upper Thompson. I went nuts buying all my favourite retro candies. Barley mints, haw crackers, choco-mint lollies... you name it, they've got it.

I managed to get my paws on a few much coveted items including this milk candy that I have not seen in at least a decade! Sadly, when I tasted it, it wasn't as yummy as I remembered it being!!

I also grabbed my much needed preserved nutmeg fruit strips - really good for when I'm feeling nauseous. In my 13 years in Perth, I've only managed to see it ONCE and never again. :(

Needless to say, I spent way too long in Biscuit King. If the hubby wasn't there, I probably would have had to pay excess baggage fees on all the goodies I would have purchased. Hehe.

One thing he did not even dream of making me forgo was my iced gem biscuits.

Iced gems, also known as Fancy Gems in the UK is a biscuit which comprises an almost cracker-like crispy biscuit topped with a colourful royal icing.

As a kid I would either eat the biscuit first and save the icing for last... or in some cases, eat the icing and dump the biscuits. Heh!

I've seen these in the Asian supermarkets from time to time but I always felt that it was such a ripoff. Plus, as good a brand as Khong Guan is... it just didn't seem to taste as nice when it's prepacked in plastic instead of served from a metal tin.

So I decided to make them for myself and am quite pleased by how easy they were too make. Although, I'm quite dismayed too because this means I'll probably end up making this on a fairly regular basis to sate my cravings. Oops.

And for the record... the pink ones taste the best :)



Iced Gems
(adapted from this recipe)

Biscuit base
140g plain flour
20g icing sugar
2 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
48g butter
54g milk
1/4 tsp vanilla essence

Royal icing
15g meringue powder
220g icing sugar
3 tablespoons of water
Gel food colouring, icing colouring (I use Wilton)

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 170 degrees (fan-forced oven) or 190 degrees (non fan-forced oven)
2. Make the biscuit base. Sift the flour, icing sugar, baking powder in a bowl. 
3. Chop your cold butter into cubes before adding it to bowl. 
4. Using only your finger tips, rub the butter into the dry ingredients until they resemble fine breadcrumbs. 
5. Add the vanilla essence to your mix.
6. Slowly add your milk in, using a knife to cut lines into the flour. 
7. Add just enough milk so that the batter comes together in a ball. It shouldn't be sticky. 
8. Lightly flour your workspace and roll the dough out to 2mm thickness. 
9. Cut out circle shapes with a small cookie cutter - I used a cannoli tube as a cookie cutter as my cutters weren't small enough!
10. Place the cut out shapes on a baking tray and bake for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown. 
11. Let the biscuits cool before icing. 
12. Make the royal icing mix. Sift the icing sugar and meringue powder into your mixing bowl.
13. Add water to the mix until the powder is JUST dissolved.
14. Turn the beaters on high for about 4 minutes until your mix reaches stiff peak stage (aka it holds its shape when you use a whisk to form peaks)
15. Divide and colour your icing mix.
16. Using a star shaped tip, pipe your icing on each biscuit. 
17. You can leave the biscuits to airdry or put it in a warm oven to dry. I used the residual heat from my baking to dry the biscuits but you can dry it in the oven at around 50 degrees. 
18. Pop an iced gem into your mouth for quality control purposes... and pop more in because you can't stop! ;)

Tips

• As suggested by the post, I doubled the biscuit base recipe (and this is reflected in this recipe) as there was more than enough icing to go around. 
• The original recipe prefers shortening. I used butter instead because I don't like using shortening. This post explains the difference and suggests that you can't make a 1 for 1 substitution but I found the biscuits came out great anyway. 
• If you want to make the rubbing in process super quick, coarsely grate butter straight into your mix. 
• I rolled out and cut my dough in batches to prevent too much flour "contamination". On my first attempt, because I rerolled the same batch of dough on the floured surface, the dough became unworkable and I had to toss it out :(
• The original recipe asks for the dough to be rolled out to 3mm thickness. My rolling pin only had 2mm and 4mm discs so I opted for the former.
• You can buy meringue powder from bakery stores. Poon Huat in Singapore sells them, I bought a container online on eBay. There are a few brands and after reading a couple of reviews decided to go for CK instead of the ever-popular Wilton.
• I found that this biscuit doesn't spread much, it only rises. So you can afford to leave less spacing between cookies.  
• I have never really piped before and used the Lekue Decomax that came with its cupcake kit. You can purchase the Decomax separately - I just bought it as part of the kit because it was cheaper (go figure!) I found it fairly easy to use but I wish it was smaller (like their chocolate decorating tool) so that there was less wastage on the side of the "stomach". I agree with most points in this review. 
• I would recommend doing 2 colours per batch of icing, 3 if you include white. I just found it troublesome having to clean out the piping bag (hence why you'll notice that some of my gems are actually two-toned). If you're using disposable icing bags though, go nuts!  
• My method of icing using the star tip - make sure the tip is actually in contact with the biscuit base before squeezing and then pulling the tip up. 

And here we have a not so great photo of two nights worth of baking. Now I just need to find a metal tin to store my gems :)