Can I haz Cheezburger? Aka Ice Cream Sandwiches

Can I haz Cheezburger?

I had a request from Elizabeth to make another Nerdy Nummies treat. This time she picked the Cheeseburger Ice Cream Sandwich.

I made my usual Empire Biscuits for the burger bun. Elizabeth and Rebecca used a round cookie cutter on the dough to make 8 cookies. I couldn't find any sugar sprinkles that weren't pink or blue, so to make the seed effect for the top "bun" I put chocolate sprinkles on the biscuits as soon as the came out of the oven, so that they would melt a bit and stick to the biscuit.

Then I used the same cookie cutter to cut out the chocolate ice cream. This part was messy! Probably best to have a bowl of hot water to dip the knife into before cutting. I did it the same way as Ro in the video linked. I cut a tub of chocolate ice cream, took the carton off it and then cut out a large cylinder of chocolate ice cream with the cookie cutter, then sliced it into 4 burger sized shapes. I then put them back into the freezer.

Next up I made some "ketchup". I made a batch of buttercream icing: 100g icing sugar, 50g butter. Then I got the girls to squish up some raspberries through a sieve and we added the puree raspberries to the buttercream. Elizabeth got herself and Rebecca a spoon each to eat this sauce because it was SO GOOD!

Then we assembled it all to look like a burger. I didn't do any "cheez" so our creation is really just a burger, but it was great all the same.

These were great fun to make with the girls. They were absolutely covered in chocolate after eating them!

Minnie's Empire

Elizabeth suggested making some Minnie Mouse biscuits to take to the childminder's house for their snack.

I made them the same way as I made the Strawberry Empires, using melted chocolate for the ears and face.

I have some black fondant icing and I know they would have looked better if I had used that instead of the chocolate, but I want the biscuits to taste nice, and I think too much fondant icing is just too sweet. Plus I know chocolate and plain icing go really well with this biscuit.

Do you want to build a snowman?

Another creation inspired by Nerdy Nummies. This time it's Olaf Ice Creams from the movie Frozen.

Elizabeth was desperate for me to try this creation. I took a look at the video and thought it looked do-able.

What you need:

• A suitable glass
• Ice cream
• Milk or plain chocolate (depending on preference really, I used milk), melted and in a piping bag
• Empire Biscuits (75g butter, 25g sugar, 100g SR flour) shaped into Olaf heads - I found a picture online to make a template to cut around
• Plain white icing for the top of the biscuit
• Orange jelly tots cut in half for the nose
• Matchsticks for the arms. I got the mini matchsticks, which were a perfect size.

Method:

I made a few biscuit heads - in case any didn't work out. Coat the top of the biscuit in white icing, add the half orange jelly tot for Olaf's nose. Once the icing is set, use your melted chocolate in a piping bag to draw the rest of the features. Meanwhile the girls got busy with cookie cutters making and decoraging their own biscuits (and eating the decorations).

To make the snowman, first pipe 3 circles of chocolate inside the glass to make the buttons and let them set.

Add your ice cream, matchsticks and lastly the biscuits and voila!

Strawberry Empires

The end of term was coming for Elizabeth at Nursery. It suddenly occurred to me that I should probably sort out a gift for her teachers. I had a brief look at the suggested gifts in Tesco, they were mostly chocolates and mugs etc. For Christmas we made them gingerbread biscuits in the shape of Christmas trees and they had gone down well, so I thought we could bake them a gift again.

I asked Elizabeth what she thought we should do, and she suggested the Christmas tree gingerbread biscuits. So I asked her if there was a more summer appropriate theme. So we went through a few ideas like suns, or sunflowers and settled on strawberries!

I Googled some pictures of strawberries and drew my own templates:

I made Empire Biscuits this time, instead of the gingerbread biscuits.

Ingredients:
150g butter
50g sugar
200g self raising flour
Strawberry jam to sandwich in the middle of 2 biscuits
Icing sugar, water with lots and lots of red food colouring for the top of the biscuits
Chocolate sprinkles for the strawberry seeds
Green fondant icing for the stalk

Method:
Cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the flour and mix into a dough.
Flour the surface before rolling the dough out to about 3 or 4 mm thick.
Cut into shapes.
Cook in the oven for about 12 minutes at 160 degrees (fan) until a light golden brown colour.
Once cooled, assemble and decorate!

I made about 10 biscuits, there are so many helpers in the nursery that I was unsure how many people I was catering for. I wrapped them up in tissue paper and bought a nice box to present them in.
They were a big hit! Almost all of the other gifts had been boxes of chocolates and they were getting a bit fed up with them, so this was a nice change.
I think if I did them again I would make them smaller, they were a bit big.

Empire Biscuits are such easy and fun biscuits to make with children. I made these strawberry ones mostly by myself because they were a gift. But usually the girls get to roll out the dough and use whatever biscuit cutters they want to cut the biscuits out. Then they love spreading the jam and decorating the finished biscuits.