This recipe for Party Rings was born out of the simple fact I bought a pack of biscuit cutters and needed to justify my spending. I couldn’t buy the cutters and not use all of them. Out the 4 biscuits I have to admit Party Rings are my least favourite but they are incredibly fun to make. I actually think they are the best ones you could make together a family with children as they’re easy to cut out and messy to decorate. Traditionally the icing is feathered, which is where you drag a skewer or cocktail stick through the wet icing to make a feather effect, but I find this fiddly and time consuming so I opted for piping but you can decorate these however you wish! Check out my recipes for Bourbon Biscuits, Custard Creams, and Jammie Dodgers.
Makes 35
Hands-on Time 30 minutes plus chilling and setting
Baking Time 12 minutes
Ingredients
120g Unsalted butter (softened)
80g Caster sugar
200g Plain flour
20g Cornflour
1 Egg, medium
1 tsp Vanilla extract
300-450g Icing sugar
Water
Food colouring (liquid gel is recommended)
Equipment
Mixing bowl
Wooden spoon
Baking parchment
Party Ring biscuit cutter or 5cm biscuit cutter and piping nozzle about 2cm wide at the base
Aluminium baking sheet
Wire rack
Dessert spoon
Piping bag
Add the butter and caster sugar to a mixing bowl and beat with a wooden spoon until light and smooth.
Add the flour and cornflour.
Stir them into the buttercream until you have a crumble like mixture.
Add the egg and vanilla extract and give a final stir until you have a thick paste.
Take a large sheet of baking parchment and fold it in half. Open the paper out and put the paste onto one of the halves. Fold the paper over to cover and flatten with your hands. Use a rolling pin to roll the paste out until it’s approximately 5-7mm thick.
Pop it into the fridge for at least an hour.
When the paste is a firm dough remove it from the fridge. Rather than use a clean sheet of parchment I rip one half off and use this for my cutout biscuits for baking. Take your cutter and stamp out your biscuits.
Place them a couple of centimetres apart on the baking parchment. If you have any dough left roll it out between the remaining piece of parchment but bear in mind you may need this piece for baking too. Try not to handle the dough too much with your hands as it will soften from your body heat and the repeated rolling out. If your dough gets too pliable again then pop it back into the fridge to set.
Once all biscuits have been cutout either using the Party Ring hexagonal cutter or the base of a piping nozzle to cut the centre out of half of the biscuits. If you remove enough dough you could possibly rollout two more biscuits.
Pop the biscuits back into the fridge for another hour. If you are limited for space you can stack one parchment of biscuits on top of the other, it won’t squash them.
In the meantime preheat your oven to 180°C/160°C(Fan)/350°F/Gas mark 4.
After the hour is up slide a sheet of parchment onto a baking sheet and pop it into the oven on a middle shelf for 12 minutes until a light golden colour.
When the time is up remove the biscuits and leave them to cool. Transfer them onto a wire rack and leave to cool fully. Keep the baking parchment, you can use it for when you’re icing.
Bake the second sheet of biscuits (if you have one) and again leave to cool.
When the biscuits have cooled, you can get on with the icing.
Depending on how many colours you want to use to decorate the biscuits add 150g of icing sugar to a clean bowl and add no more than 5 teaspoons of water.
Stir using a spoon until smooth. If the icing is still too thick then add more water one drop at a time. Go slowly. You want the icing to be thick but not too much that you’re literally scraping it off the bottom of the bowl. Bear in mind the food colouring if you’re using a liquid one.
Add a few drops of food colouring or the tiniest amount of gel (like a skewer dipped into the colouring) to the icing. Stir until the there no streaks.
Spoon the icing on top of the biscuits and smooth out using the back of a spoon. The icing will very slowly drip over the sides of the biscuits.
Place the biscuit onto the baking parchment you set aside. If you want to use two different colour icings whip them up one at a time. If you make them all at once then one will harden and semi set before you can get to use it, although don’t worry it can be recovered with a good stir.
When you have iced all of the biscuits carefully pick them up. Using your fingers wipe off any drips of icing and use your pinky finger to clear the centre if it’s clogged and place them back onto the wire rack.
Now make the final batch of icing following the above steps.
Spoon into a piping bag and drizzle the icing over the tops of the biscuits.
Leave the icing to set and harden before tucking in.
Enjoy!
