Tasked with the joyous challenge of providing jungle themed food for a 4th birthday party, I fell in love with the idea of animal print biscuits and was so delighted with the results, I thought I’d share the recipe with you!
Ingredients listed at the bottom of the page
First cream together the softened butter and icing sugar. It is best to use a stand mixer because there is a 3 min ‘fluffing up’ process coming up, which would be very difficult without it.
In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. This is just to mix the salt and baking powder evenly into the flour, so easy enough to just do with a spoon or fork.
Add egg, lemon juice and vanilla to the butter and sugar mix, scraping down the sides, and mix again until fluffy (at least 3 minutes) - this mix will be referred to as ‘mix 1’
Next remove 115g of your butter and icing sugar etc mix into a separate bowl and add 2 tbsp coco powder and some black food colouring. Wrap this in cling film and put it in the fridge for 30 mins, while you carry on
Add the majority of the rest of the flour (judge the consistency - it should be firm, together and not too crumbly) to mix 1 (still in the stand mixer) - you can drop some milk in to bring the mix together if it is looking crumbly.
Then add orange food colouring to make a strong orange. I used colouring paste, which is strong in colour and withstands the cooking process. Avoid those liquidy ones you get in the supermarket - they tend to fade in the cooking process.
Put this in the fridge for 25 minutes.....
CUP OF TEA
..... then take out the brown / black dough and roll out quite thin. Place between 2 layers of cling film and put in the freezer for 5 minutes, while you carry on with the orange dough
Now preheat the oven to 175C (fan oven)
Take the orange dough out of the fridge and roll out to the required biscuit thickness
Now remove the brown dough from the freezer and hand cut into tiger stripe shapes and lay the shapes on top of the rolled out orange dough
Place a layer of cling film over the now patterned dough and roll on top of the cling film to incorporate the stripes into the orange dough
Cut into rounds and place on a lined baking tray
Bake for 15 - 18 minutes
then NOM NOM NOM!
Ingredients
250g softened unsalted butter
200g icing sugar
500g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1 large egg
3/4 of a tbsp fresh lemon juice 1tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp coco powder
orange food colour paste
black food colour paste