Biscuits for icing/sandwiching

This is the recipe I always turn to at Christmas to make our iced 'Christmas tree biscuits'. As it is relatively low in sugar, it can cope with any amount of icing or jam the children load onto it.
I substitute stevia for sugar too. Even with the icing, that makes it just a teaspoonful of sugar or less per biscuit depending on the size. (Using a pear or grape juice based conserve to sandwich them together instead of jam will also reduce the sugar levels, or use my sugar free butter cream recipe)

125g butter
60g sugar*
1/2tsp vanilla extract
220g plain flour**
1 egg, beaten
30g cornflour
1/2 tsp baking powder

royal icing for decorating, or butter-cream and/or jam to sandwich together

Preheat the oven to 180deg c. Butter several baking sheets.
Cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract.
Sieve flour, cornflour and baking powder together, and mix in with a spoon. Work into a soft dough using your hand.
Roll out on a floured board and cut into shapes.
Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from the baking sheets and cool on a wire cooling rack.
Once fully cold, they can be iced using royal icing, or sandwiched together with butter cream and/or jam.

*If you prefer, omit the sugar and replace with 60g xylitol, or 1/4tsp stevia powder.
**If you are eating a wheat-free diet, Spelt flour can be used as a replacement.

There is no limit to what you can do with these beauties. If you have a biscuit cutter collection to rival Nigella Lawson's, then you will have a heaps of inspiration, but here's a few more suggestions:

• Cut half with a circular cutter, and half with a ring cutter. Sandwich them together with one of the following:

                  Jam
                  chocolate ganache
                  icing flavoured with lemon or lime
                  vanilla, chocolate or orange butter-cream (especially good if you cover the top with chocolate!)

• Cut the dough into rectangles, cutting three holes in to half of them with a mini circular cutter. Fill with three different coloured jams to make traffic light biscuits for the kids.
• make a chocolate biscuit dough by sieving 30g of cocoa into the flour, and cover the baked biscuits with chocolate
• cut out mini circular biscuits. Once cold, dip into milk, dark or white chocolate using a chocolate dipper.
• Let the kids go wild with an assortment of cutters, icing and decorations

Sugar free butter cream

This is my standard butter cream recipe that I now use. Based on a german butter cream, a thick 'custard' is made first, which needs to be chilled before whisking in the butter. Occasionally, t can be a bit tricky to get the temperature right. You are basically making an emulsion of fat and liquid, so if the custard is too warm, or the butter too cold they will not blend well and the butter cream will separate (curdle). Likewise, if it is too cold, the butter will harden and you will see flecks of butter in the mixture. Both problems are easily remedied by standing the butter cream above a bowl of hot water, or standing it in a bowl of cold water depending on which problem you have encountered. It is less cloying than the usual 'butter and icing sugar' blend, with a creamy texture, so persevere. It is worth it!


1tbsp cornflour
1/2c milk (or use 1/4c coconut milk and 1/4 c rice milk if you are dairy free)
125g butter, softened
1/3c xylitol or 1/8-1/4tsp stevia powder
2tsp vanilla extract

Blend the cornflour and milk together. Heat in a pan, stirring continuously, until thick.
Spoon into a bowl, cool to room temperature then refrigerate.

Once the thickened milk is completely cold, whisk in the xylitol and vanilla extract. (An electric stick blender is handy for this) gradually add the softened butter until it is smooth and slightly fluffy.

The butter cream can be flavoured with 2-3 tbsp of fruit puree, or the vanilla can be omitted and 1-2tbsp of cocoa powder blended into the cornflour before the milk is added.

It CAN be done! low-sugar birthday cake

Today, I had to meet a rather tall order. I was to run a pre-schoolers birthday party, with food that was low sugar, low wheat and yeast free.
The criteria had been set by myself. The party was for my youngest daughter, and I wanted to provide food that my eldest girl could eat. I wanted to be able to say to her' Go for it! Eat what you like!'
And, I have to proudly say, I DID IT!

Here's the main reason for my pride:

Most of it is very low in sugar. I can't say 'sugar free', as the cake and chocolate both have milk and/or milk solids in, which contain lactose. It is however, sucrose free with the exception of a few of the bears and decorations.
The bears are made from moulding chocolate. I would have used sugar-free/low-sugar chocolate for all of them, but at $7-$10 a bar, it costs far too much, so I had to settle on using standard chocolate for some.
The food decorations are made mostly from pettinice, so again, these were not sugar free. However, the cake itself is wheat free and low-sugar, as is the chocolate ganache that it is covered with.
I also made low-sugar cupcakes, iced with dark chocolate ganache and decorated with carob buttons and carob chips in some vague imitation of bear faces.
They don't look very much like bears, but seemed pleasing enough to a house full of children, and I'm fairly certain I got away with the carob!

For the first time in twelve months, my daughter could eat shared food without restrictions. Her happy whoop said it all!