Cupcakes, Cake and Passion: Anti Valentines Gluten-Free Zombie Cookies

It's a little late in February for a Valentines post but I don't like Valentines so there you go. I like the idea to dress up in red and eatting chocolates and sweets but thats it. I don't fancy overpaying for a meal that costs less any other day, but because its Valentines day its £60 for a sub-par 3 course meal and a cheap glass of plonk wine... Yeah no thanks...

But I appreciate that people think its a real holiday and people really go above and beyond to celebrate. I made my feelings about Valentines clear last year in this post.

Yet last year, I still fell into the trap of making treats for Valentines day. I caved into the pressure!! Damn you Valentines! Actually the truffles and biscuits were very tasty and it was nice to have the boyfriend around to fight over them with as well.

So what happened this year? The weekend before Valentines I spent with my boyfriend because I have too many university deadlines and we don't really do Valentines. We prefer to make anytime we spend together special rather then just the one day.

I had spent Valentines weekend alone eating chocolates and baking of course! This year I decided to channel my distaste for Valentines with these horrors:

They want your heart and your brains!!!

Using the dough recipe and icing recipe on last years Valentine heart biscuits by using Fred biscuit cutters (which I got as an epic Christmas present. Thanks Ben and Lucy!) I was able to create some yummy biscuit creations, however they became really wet. At first I thought: Must have made the icing wrong. But I found out that one of my family members had stored the biscuits in a moist environment (it was stored in very cold conservatory). So that's why the biscuits ran but they just look more horrific, which is the look that is really on trend, well it is for zombies.

My advice when you start these biscuits:

Bake your biscuits and make sure they are cold or your icing will warp.
While your biscuits are baking draw how you would like to decorate your biscuits. I really went to town with my doodles.
Stick with 3-4 colours for your zombies. I used 5 colours and it got fiddley and annoying as I wanted it done by colour 3.
Do one colour at a time, one zombie at a time. I tried to fill in all the greens on all the zombies. That doesn't work and it will cause a mess. This is why 2 batches were made so you had the outlines icing and the filling icing

Recipe: Makes 20 biscuits

125g unsalted butter
125g caster sugar
1 medium egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g Doves Farm plain flour, sieved plus a little extra to flour your work surface.

Equipment:

Electric whisk
Bowl
Sieve
Undead Fread Cookie cutters
Speech Bubble cookie cutter (I don't have one so I used a paper template)
Whisk
Cling-film
Baking sheet lined with parchment
Rolling pin

1. In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy.

2. Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix together.

3. Sift half the flour into the bowl and mix in, then sift in the other half and mix again.

4. Knead the dough until smooth, then wrap in cling-film and let it rest in the freezer for an hour at least.

5. Pre-heat your oven to 180c/350f/Gas Mark 4.

6. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to around 4mm thick and cut out into zombie shapes.

7. Place on a baking sheet lined with baking parchment and bake for 10-15 minutes until lightly golden brown. Allow to cool before decorating.

Recipe: Stiff peak royal icing

1kg icing sugar/confectioners’ sugar
4 medium egg whites
2 tsp lemon juice
Green, blue, black and red food colouring paste (you can leave a little icing white if you prefer)

Equipment:

Electric whisk
Bowl x 5
Sieve
10 disposable piping bags
Scissors
Forks x 5
Toothpick
Tissue
Tablespoons x 5
Zombie decorating sheet

1. Sift the icing sugar into a bowl.

2. Add the egg whites and the lemon juice to the icing sugar and mix together for about 5 minutes.

3. The mix should look smooth and shiny. If it looks a little dry then add one drop of lemon juice and mix for a minute.

4.Once your icing makes a stiff peak put it in 4 clean bowls (5 if you keeping a little white icing).

5. Colour the different bowls different colours using the food colouring. (Leave one of the icing bowls coloured white)

6. Quarter fill, 4 (or 5) of the piping bags with each colour. Snip a small hole in the top of each bag.

7. Take a biscuit and starting from the top centre, pipe an different coloured outlines around the inside edge of the biscuit to the tip of the zombie.

8. Make sure there are no holes or missing gaps in the zombies, if there are fill them in with the correct colour.

9. Once all the zombies have been outlined, add a teaspoon of water to each of the colours until the consistency of each icing is runny. Keep adding water, carefully, until it reaches running consistency but not watery.

10. Fill each 4 (or 5) more disposable piping bags and cut small holes in the ends.