Gluten Free Hundreds & Thousands (100s and 1000s)
If you are following my baking my way round New Zealand blogs, welcome to the next edition - hundreds and thousands! These are a sweet and simple biscuit to make, and uses my biscuit base that many of my other recipes use. Then it's topped with a royal icing and 100s and 1000s sprinkles. Please be aware that many 100s and 1000s sprinkles contain wheat! I checked quite a few of the chain supermarkets here in the U.K. and I was only successful at Sainsbury's. If you'd like to check out a few of my other New Zealand bakes, check out my squiggles, mint slice or mallowpuffs. More coming soon!
Royal Icing
Royal Icing is an icing which is characterised by how it hardens and shines once set. You may have seen it before on gingerbread houses, or elegantly designed sugar cookies. The best this about Royal Icing is that you can change the consistency to suit your needs. It can easily be adapted for outlining or flooding, by changing the amount of water you mix in. For this recipe, it needs to be a runny consistency, so the biscuits can be dipped in on one side.
I N G R E D I EN T S
Biscuit
70 grams butter
1/4 cup caster sugar
1 cup of plain gluten free flour
1 1/2 Tbsp of milk
1/4 tsp of baking powder (maybe none)
1/4 tsp xanthan gum
1/4 tsp salt
Icing
1 1/2 cup of icing sugar
1 egg white
1/2 tsp lemon juice
2 drops vanilla essence
2-3 drops pink or red food colouring
2 tbsp of water (to make the icing runny)
100's & 1000s (make sure they are gluten free!!)
M E T H O D
For the biscuit: Beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
Sift in the flour, milk, baking powder, salt, and xanthan gum and mix again with wooden spoon until you can form a ball with your hands.
Wrap the ball in cling film and put into fridge for half and hour.
When chilled, dust a surface with flour, and roll out dough until about 3mm thick.
Using a ridged cookie cutter about 6cm in diameter, cut out cookies until you have used all the dough.
Place on a lined baking tray, and bake at 180° celsius for 10 minutes, or until golden around the edges. You may need to do this in 2 lots. Once cooked, let the cookies cool completely.
To make the Royal Icing: lightly whisk the egg white in a large bowl and then add the icing sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla essence and mix until combined.
Slowly add in the water until you have a smooth and runny consistency.
Add in the pink or red food colouring and mix until you have a baby pink colour.
Assemble: Dip the biscuits in to the icing and let the excess run off and then place onto a tray lined with baking paper. Do about 10 and a time and then sprinkle with the 100s & 1000s. If you leave the sprinkles to the end you might find that the icing has hardened and the sprinkles won't stick.
Repeat until all biscuits are iced and then leave to set for an hour. Enjoy!
