25.08.2019
It’s been a long time since I wrote a baking post, and with the Great British Bake-off back on our screens next week, I felt inspired to try something. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, so I went to the supermarket hoping to get some inspiration.
I always look at the pre-made mixtures because I’m a very lazy baker. If you’ve ever seen ‘Nailed It’ on Netflix, that pretty much sums up my baking abilities. I do give it my best shot and put my all into what I’m doing, but I’m just too messy and impatient to get the best results! I’m a real ‘shove it in the oven and hope for the best’ kind of girl!
So as I was browsing the pre-made section, I came across this ‘Llama decorating kit’ and I was intrigued. Llamas seem to be the ‘in’ animal at the moment, apparently overtaking the unicorn phase, and I thought the biscuits looked hilarious. On closer inspection, the box only contained the decorations, so you had to look elsewhere to make the actual biscuits. I decided to make gingerbread instead of plain biscuits, mainly because I’m excited for Autumn and gingerbread makes me feel cosy.
I started by making the gingerbread by mixing all the ingredients together. Once the dough was ready, I started rolling it out on the worktop. But when I came to get the llama cutter, I realised it was just a cardboard cut-out to use as a stencil! I’m not a big fan of cutting around a flimsy stencil because the edges always seem to be ragged and it takes a lot more time. It also means that each llama looks a bit different instead of them all being uniform and neat. I tried my best, but at this point it was starting to get pretty hot and I was losing patience.
Once the Llamas and cacti were all cut and in the oven, I had a chance to clear up and have a proper look at the different decorations. There were plenty of edible decorations, and I quickly realised that this was going to be much fiddlier than I had anticipated! I had horrible visions of how my poor llamas might turn out, all wonky and covered in blobs of dropped icing.
Once out of the oven, I was satisfied with how they were looking. They gained a bit of weight in the oven but they looked delicious, and they maintained their shape well. While they were cooling, I prepared the fondant.
I’ve never used fondant before, and I probably won’t ever again. It was very sticky, prone to breaking and easily discoloured, especially the white llama fondant! Once again I had to cut the fondant using the stencils provided, which was slightly easier to do with fondant than it was with dough. The good thing about the fondant was that it was very easy to move once it was on the biscuit, so I could flatten it and make it larger in places or change the shape if needed.
With the fondant on, it was time to get decorating! I basically just followed what was on the box because I thought it looked nice enough. It wasn’t nearly as fiddly as I thought it was going to be, and once the first llama was done, I felt like I was on a roll.
I’m really pleased with how they turned out. They’re a little bit wonky and rough around the edges, but they taste amazing, I promise. I think I prefer the cacti to the llamas, they look neater and the decorations are nicer.
I hope you enjoyed this little blog post as much as I enjoyed making it! Maybe I’ll do a bit more baking in the future.
-Holly
HollyRobiin 