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How about rustling up some of these for Mum this Mother’s Day?
Treat your someone special to a plate full of gorgeous flower biscuits – they’re much easier to do than they look and I know my Mum will love them!
Whilst I’ve got you here I’ve also spotted a great little comp by Waitrose Direct – they’re having a Making for Mum competition on their facebook page, and I know you lot are crafty and creative! There are some great prizes on offer and all you have to do is submit of a photo of what you’ve made for your Mum, I’m heading straight off to send them these.
So let’s get to it!
You will need:
1 x batch of biscuit dough, recipe here
Gel Paste Colours - green and pink
How To:
Set aside 3/4′s of the biscuit dough and divide the remaining into 3.
To colour each of these flatten out the dough, add a little amount of gel paste colouring the the centre, gather the dough up to enclose the colour in the middle and start to knead gently to disperse the colour.
Try and keep the colouring in the middle of your ball of dough and let it work it’s way out – that way you should avoid getting a big blob on your hands and walking round with green fingers for the rest of the week!
Knead until the colour is evenly dispersed throughout the dough. If the colour is too pale add in a touch more gel paste and knead again.
Colour one portion green, for the leaves and two portions pink, one slightly paler than the other just by adding less or more of the pink gel paste.
Set the colours to one side, wrapped in clingfilm or in a plastic bag so they don’t dry out.
Roll out portions of plain biscuit dough on your worksurface, keep it lightly floured to make sure the dough doesn’t stick.
Cut out circular biscuits and transfer to a tray lined with baking paper or a non-stick liner.
Take a slightly smaller circular cutter, position it evenly on the biscuit and press down lightly – not to cut through the biscuit just to imprint the circle.
Now it’s time for the flowers. The design is entirely up to you – some bigger flowers, some with smaller ones. I soon got bored doing the tiddly ones (sorry Mum!)
You shouldn’t need any flour or oil on your hands to stop the dough from sticking to you, once the butter in the biscuit dough warms up and the dough is nice and pliable you’re good to go.
For the flowers – roll a ball in the palm of your hand.
Roll the ball into a long sausage.
Using the forefinger of your opposite hand press down the length of the sausage, just on one side to make it thin.
Now from one end start to curl up the sausage, the thin side is the petals outer edge.
Roll it up, fairly loosely around the top edge of the flower until you get the the end.
Using a pair of scissors, snip the excess off the base of the flower, this will give it a flat base to sit on. Whilst the flower is still sat on the blades of the scissors you can transfer it over to the biscuit and set it down roughly where you want it.
For the leaves – roll a ball of green in the palm of your hand.
Flatten it with your fingertip.
Pinch one end to form the leaf shape.
Using a knife mark a line down the centre of the leaf to create the vein.
Play around with leaves and flowers of different sizes. The pieces just need placing onto the biscuits, they bake into position so need no water or anything else to stick them there.
Once you’ve decorated all your biscuits put the tray into the fridge to chill for 30 minutes to firm up.
Preheat the oven to 190c (fan)/200c/Gas Mark 6.
Check that the dough of the flowers is firm and then bake in the oven for 6-8 minutes. Keep an eye on them as they bake, turning the tray around mid bake if they are browning too much on one side.
They should just be very lightly golden. If over baked then the flowers and leaves will take on too much of a golden tinge too.
Allow to cool on the tray for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Serve to your lovely Mum for Mother’s Day!
They’ll keep for 1 week in an airtight container.
Coloured dough is a great thing to let the children play with and create their own designs, colour up portions of dough and set them creating!
You can use all sorts of colours of gel pastes so don’t restrict yourself to pink – for me that was of course the natural choice. Blues are great but purple tends to go fairly grey in the oven so it’s probably best avoided.
Ruth Clemens, Baker Extraordinaire
Meet me down the aisles of The Pink Whisk Shop – for all sorts of cake decorating and baking delights!
Brilliant I think these will go down a treat
Thanks Ruth
They are fantastic! Thanks for sharing. Kisses from Spain
These biscuits are so beautiful. I can’t believe I’ve never thought about decorating biscuits this way before.
So pretty! I’ll use these for birthdays and school charity events as well. Thanks Ruth. X
Ruth I’ve never seen this done with biscuit dough before – I think it’s brilliant! X
These are great, wouldn’t have thought of colouring the biscuit dough itself.
They are amazing- what a fantastic idea! I didn’t realise you could colour dough, having only used it for icing, but it is fantastic.
These are beautiful.!.prettiest biscuits I have seen…Perfect as a wedding favor too in a little bag with a ribbon.!!.
You are so clever, Ruth! Such a simple idea, but so effective. Lovely!
These are so cute.Thanks for sharing your very creative ideas xx
What a great idea using the biscuit dough to colour as opposed to more sugar if using royal icing or fondant. Thanks for sharing Ruth.
Beautiful! You have such patience, and they look gorgeous. x
Hi, i wanted to ask if i can add some liquid food colouring to the dough since i havent got gel pastes. would that work??
Try adding a little bit, you may also need to work in a little extra flour too so that its not to wet a dough. If not, Morrisons sell the gel paste colours I noticed last time I was in there x
Oh I love these! Great tutorial on the decoration too.
Ruth, these are FAB, thank you so much! I made them today as an early Mother’s Day gift because I probably won’t have time on Sunday and they turned out brilliantly
And they taste lovely too! Will definitely be making this my staple biscuit dough from now on 
Oh, and I used liquid food colouring as I didn’t have any paste and it worked just fine 
x
I seem to have gone overboard with the smiley faces… but I guess that just proves how happy I am…
Brilliant Beth! x
We’re having a “Festival of Baking” in our village hall tomorrow and have just made a batch of these to sell on our school table. They may not be quite as perfect as yours Ruth but they look pretty damn good. Thank you so much for posting this, like others have said I’ve never thought of colouring the dough itself before but it certainly is very effective!
That’s great news Sam, hope you made lots! x
Thanks for these! My mum and stepmum loved them: http://georginasnewthings.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/a-bouquet-of-biscuits-for-mothers-day.html
Brilliant Georgina, love the yellow flowers too x
MMmmmmm, never mind mothers day, I could eat these any time
Please come and check out my latest post if you have a few minutes spare
p.s. I’ve given the blog a bit of a face lift!
http://www.fragile-bird.blogspot.co.uk
Helen
X
Looking great Helen x
I made these with my two daughters yesterday and they absolutely loved them. They were easy for people like me who are somewhat challenged in the artistic/decorating department!! They looked fantastic (although not quite as good as Ruth’s it has to be said!!!).
I am sure they did Lucy! xx
Thankyou very much Ruth. I did this with a drop of red and pink liquid food colouring and they came out just as good!
My mum got them Mother’s Day and loved them. It’s not just the look, they taste great too!
My sister thought the roses were icing!
Fantastic! x
Hiya, I’m such a big fan of your blog, the ideas and recipes are great! My daughter made these biscuits at the weekend for her nana, i’ve written a post about them over at charliescakes.blogspot.com. she’d love it if you had a look!
They look great! x
These are so beautiful! I can’t wait to give them a try! Thank you. : )
I made these biscuits (using my gingerbread man cutter) they tasted delicious and only lasted 2 days even though i made 2 batches. Your recipes are excellent! I’ve tried many of them and they’re loved by my family. Thank you for sharing these fantastic creations