How to Make Pumpkin Spice Biscuits
Easy to bake and gorgeous to look at, these pumpkin spice biscuits are perfect to create for a Halloween party, or to enjoy all to yourself
- 240g unsalted butter, room temperature
- 100g golden granulated sugar
- 100g demerara sugar
- 1 medium egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 3 tsp Pumpkin Spice (see below)
- 360g plain flour
- 60g toffees
- Royal icing sugar
- Food colouring
- Piping bags and nozzles
- For the Pumpkin Spice
- 4 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- ½ tsp ground nutmeg
- ¼ tsp ground cloves
- ¼ tsp allspice
In a stand mixer or using an electric whisk, cream together the butter and sugars until pale and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat again. Tip in the flour, spices and salt and mix until everything is fully incorporated (1).
Break the toffees up into bits using a food processor – or seal in a bag and bash them with a rolling pin – and stir the toffee pieces into the mixture (2). Divide the dough into two (this will chill the dough quicker and be easier to roll out than one big ball) and wrap in cling film, flattening the dough into slabs. Chill the dough in the fridge for 30–45 minutes.
Heat your oven to 180C and line two baking trays with greaseproof paper. Roll out one half of the chilled dough approximately 5mm thick (3). Use a pumpkin cutter to cut out shapes and put them on the trays (4). Put the trays in the fridge for 15 minutes to chill the biscuits once more.
Bake the biscuits for seven to nine minutes, removing them from the oven when the edges are just starting to brown. Use an icing smoother to lightly smooth the tops of the hot biscuits to ensure a flat and even surface to pipe on when decorating. Leave the biscuits to cool for 10 minutes on the trays before transferring them to a cooling rack. Repeat with the remaining dough.
In a stand mixer, mix half a box of royal icing sugar with enough water to make a stiff but pipeable consistency. Add a drop or two of food colouring and stir well, then divide the icing between two bowls. Keep one bowl as the stiffer consistency – this will be used to pipe the outlines and add details. Add a drop or two of water to the other bowl of icing to make it slightly runnier – this will be the icing you use to flood the biscuits.
Fit a piping bag with a nozzle and pipe the outlines of the pumpkin (5). Leave the outlines for 15 minutes to set. Fill in the outlines with the runnier icing. Leave the icing to set for an hour or two. Use the stiff icing to over pipe details on top using a smaller nozzle (6).
Lastly, pipe on the stems of the pumpkins using a stiff icing and use a zig zag motion to add texture. Alternatively, you can decorate them in an array of Autumnal colours (7&8).
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