Bake a Off: Natarajan vs Philipps - Week 2

So, this week it was biscuit week. Hard to say who won this week because somebody (mentioning no names, Bren) ate all of his, *ahem* their biscuits before they could be judged by an independent taster. Fortunately, I have photographic evidence.

Bren:

Bren made chocolate chip cookies using this recipe  

Nikki:

I made gingerbread biscuits, but as I've made gingerbread men before I thought I would give myself the extra challenge and cut a different shape and ice them. I was inspired by this You Tube video
Of course, those are made by experts so they look far better than mine, but I'm a professional biscuit eater so what could go wrong?! 

My Gingerbread Recipe from Mary Berry

I made my own nail varnish bottle template. I know you can buy them (and I will now the challenge has been completed) but I wanted to create everything from scratch like they would have done in the real Bake Off. 

Once I'd baked the biscuits, I left them overnight to completely cool. This was around the time that Bren's biscuits mysteriously disappeared...

Then, I made the icing by mixing 150g of sifted icing sugar with water. You have to add the water gradually - no more than 1 tablespoon at a time. When you're mixing it, you should be looking for a consistency that covers the back of your spoon but also drops off the spoon and moulds back into the rest of the icing easily. If it's too funny you could always reverse the process and put a bit more icing sugar in, just make sure you sift it first.

As you can probably tell, one batch of icing came out better than the other...

Can you tell which icing came out better??!

But they all taste good!! Needless to say, about half of these have gone now lol. But, now I know how to improve here for next time and hopefully they'll be better! And purple =D

So, I guess this week's Bake Off was a draw due to lack of comparative testing. Next week will be bread - which neither of us have done before (I don't think adding ingredients to a bread maker counts for this contest!!). Off to study the recipe books!!