Gold Medal biscuits for medal-winners

Did you know that London is hosting a World-renowned event, and in just a few short weeks?

OK, so you’d have to live in North Korea to not know that. Even The Little Misses have special events planned at Nursery and Kindergarten, and I shall be making good use of my awesome ‘lympic torch at the end of term when our playgroup will be having their very own relay event. In keeping with the insanely sporty nature of the coming months, LBG is having a birthday party at a local sports club in June and the theme, unsurprisingly, will be ‘Sport, Stage and Dance’. Her entire class is being invited, so a venue far from home was required, which brings a new set of challenges for me since I usually have total ownership on Kids’ Parties. Sitting and watching whilst other people run the show will be a challenge. But then I do have to make a cake for fifty children and various adults and friends so that should exhaust me in advance of the party.

Now that I have written- that’s hand-written- all fifty invitations (yes, 50), I have turned my mind to the only other area of planning required: the party favours. In the past I have put together bags of bits and pieces that are age appropriate and in keeping with the theme of the event (I suspect I was a party planner in a former life. I just love co-ordinating everything.) The sporty nature, not just of the party, but of the country at large at that stage, with mere weeks to go until the opening ceremony, lends itself to a theme for the gifts. I don’t know that I have the stamina for fifty party bags, so am thinking of getting one item per child, which still requires some investigation and, indeed, price negotiation. But I have decided to make them all medal biscuits to take home: everyone will be a winner that way. To get an idea, I did a dry-run a couple of days ago with some leftover biscuit dough I had.

Method:

1. Roll your chosen biscuit dough (mine is from The Biscuiteers Book) to about 5mm thick then cut into rounds- mine were made using a 68mm cutter.

2. This step I forgot to do, but if you wish to thread ribbon onto your biscuit you should do it before the biscuits cook. Taking a straw, poke two holes in one edge of the biscuit, approximately 2cm apart. Once you have removed the small circles of dough, cut away the gap between the two holes so that you create a lozenge-shaped hole with rounded edges which you can use once the biscuits are finished to thread your ribbon through. Bear in mind that you should not make this lozenge shape too close to the edge of your biscuit because you will risk it breaking.

3. Bake until golden brown then leave to cool. Make up a batch of white royal icing.

4. Once cool, pipe royal icing around the edge of the biscuits (go underneath and around the ribbon hole).

5. Thin down the rest of the icing and use to ‘flood’ the area inside the piped edge. Leave to dry, or pop back into your cooling oven and allow to harden.

6. Once the icing has dried, spray the cookies gold. I used Dr Oetker Gold Spray that has been used with great success before. One can should do about 125 cupcakes so that should be plenty for the sixty-or-so biscuits I’ll be making. They also make a silver version.

7. Finally embellish using an black edible felt pen. I’ll confess that I was in a rush when I did this bit. I’ll probably pipe the details for the actual party, but you get the idea.