In this video recipe Barry shows you how to make homemade iced gems, that’s right he’s making iced gems those nostalgic treats from every kids party, you’ll love making these from scratch! This is the second recent nostalgic recipe after the baked bean pizza recipe, which has gone down a storm (although we can’t believe some you have never heard of it before!)
The dough for this recipe will also look familiar, especially if you made the homemade jammie dodgers too, it’s a pretty basic biscuit dough that can be used as a foundation for hundreds of biscuits and cookies.
Start off by creaming together the butter and sugar, make sure the butter is room temperature, mix until the sugar is fully incorporated into the butter. Now add in the plain flour and mix through, this will dry the mixture up considerably.
Using clean hands grab the mixture and shape into a ball. Now either flour a board in plain flour and roll out, or do like I did in the video and roll between two sheets of clingfilm to about a half inch thick. Now get something small and circular to shape the base of the iced gems, a small cookie cutter or lid (there’s no rule here, make massive ones if you want!). Cut out the shapes and sit them on a lined baking tray, repeat until you have lots of small discs. Stick the tray in the fridge for 20 minutes to firm up the dough.
Once chilled bake in the oven from the fridge for 7-8 minutes at gas 3 or equivalent, see oven temperature conversion chart. They will not look like they are done at this time, but you do not want the edges to brown, they will still be a bit soft when you take them out of the oven, but let them cool and they will firm up!
Meanwhile for the icing, mix the royal icing sugar with the water (replace with vodka if you want naughty ones!) whisk for a good 5 minutes until peaks form. Divide the icing up and colour using food colouring gels if you wish, stick in a piping bag with a large star shape nozzle.
Pipe a squide of the icing in the centre of each one and pull up quickly, to leave a peak – repeat with all your colour until you are done. They take about 30 mins to harden up so leave them once piped initially before gobbling up, keep in an air tight container to keep the biscuits fresh.
That’s it, hope you make these homemade ice gems and let me know how you get on when you do, good luck!