The Very Hungry Caterpillar biscuits

One of my very good friends is expecting a baby and so I offered to organise a baby shower for her. We decided to hold it at a café called Tart in Bristol, which offers a fantastic range of home-made cakes and tarts (and a lovely glass of sparkling rose wine!). As such, I couldn’t make any cakes etc to take along, but decided that I could get away with taking some iced biscuits along as favours.

My friend hasn’t found out whether she is expecting a boy or a girl so the theming for the party had to be gender-neutral. I decided to go for a bright and cheerful theme based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar book – which I loved as a child! I bought some spotty bunting and tablecloth, some Hungry Caterpillar napkins and made some bunting from pictures in the book printed onto photo paper. Inspired by ideas on Flickr, I decided to make these biscuits and package them up in little bags for the party guests.These would also make great biscuits for a child's birthday party.

These biscuits follow the same Biscuiteers’ recipe and method as I used for my Easter spiced biscuits earlier in the year, simply leaving out the orange zest and spices, and adding extra lemon zest. This recipe makes great biscuits and so I always come back to it when I need to make cookie-cutter biscuits.

Be warned though - these look fab but did take a loooong time to decorate! 

Lemon cookie-cutter biscuits

Ingredients (makes approx. 24 biscuits)

1. 350g plain flour
2. 100g self-raising flour
3. Zest of 2 lemons (save juice for the icing)
4. 125g granulated sugar
5. 125g salted butter, diced (at room temp)
6. 125g golden syrup
7. 1 large egg, lightly beaten

Method

1. Sift the flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl.
2. Add the sugar and stir well.
3. Rub in the butter, using just the tips of your fingers, until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
4. Make a well in the centre of your mix and add the golden syrup, egg and zest.
5. Use a knife to stir the mixture until it begins to come together as a dough.
6. Use your hands to bring the dough together.
7. Divide the dough into two and shape into two flat disks.
8. Place the first piece of dough between two sheets of baking parchments. (This means that you do not have to add extra flour when rolling.)
9. Roll the dough out evenly until it is approximately 5-6mm thick all over (you can buy rolling guides, but I have this rolling pin, which is brilliant!). If the top or bottom sheets of parchment crinkle at any time, peel it off and smooth out.
10. When rolled to the correct thickness, move the dough (still sandwiched between parchment) onto a baking tray and then into the fridge to chill for at least 20-30 minutes.
11. Pre-heat oven to 170C.
12. After chilling, use a square cutter to cut out the biscuits, cutting each one as close to the last as possible, in order to use the dough efficiently. Re-roll the dough as necessary, but try to work the dough as little as possible. 
13. Place each biscuit onto a lined baking tray, allowing space between as the biscuits will spread a little.
14. Bake the biscuits for 14 – 18 minutes. When cooked, the biscuits will be very lightly golden, firm around the edges but still slightly soft on top.
15. Remove the baking trays from the oven and carefully remove each biscuit from the tray, placing them gently onto a wire cooling rack. The biscuits will still be very delicate at this stage. 
16. Allow biscuits to cool totally before storing or icing.

To decorate

These biscuits were covered with rolled fondant and then decorated with royal icing, which dries to a very hard surface – making it easy to wrap these biscuits as presents or transport them. The easiest way to work with royal icing is to start with a ready-made royal icing mix. 

Ingredients

1. 250g fondant icing
2. 1 tblsp lemon juice for brushing
3. 500g royal icing sugar
4. 75ml lemon juice
5. Paste food colours - red, green, yellow, blue
6. Food colour pens

Method

1. Roll out the fondant icing to approximately 2mm thick.
2. Cut out using a square cutter (slightly smaller than the one used to cut out the biscuits).
3. Brush each biscuit with a little lemon juice before topping with a square of icing.
4. Add the 75ml juice to the royal icing sugar in a large bowl.
5. Use an electric mixer to beat the mix (starting on low and increasing to high speed) for about 5 minutes. You are looking for the mix to be bright white and a toothpaste-like consistency (this is “line icing”).
6. Divide the line icing between 3 smaller bowls.
7. Use a skewer to add small amounts of the red, green and yellow paste colours to the bowls of icing, adding a little at a time until you reach the desired colour. 
8. Spoon some of the icing into a piping bag with a very small round tip.
9. Pipe the outlines of the caterpillar body with the green icing, the head with the red icing and the sun with the yellow icing. Set aside some of the red and green line icing to add details to the iced biscuits.
10. Add water to the icing left in the bowls until you reach a pouring consistency (this is called “flooding icing”).
11. Spoon into a piping bag or piping bottle.
12. Pipe the red flooding icing onto the biscuits to fill the head areas outlined on the biscuits.
13. Pipe some of the green flooding icing into sections of the body.
14. Add a little blue or more green paste colour to the remaining green icing to vary the colour and pipe into further sections of the caterpillar body. Repeat for further sections of the caterpillar body.
15. Pipe the yellow flooding icing into the piped sun, adding a little orange or red paste colour to add depth.  
16. Allow iced biscuits to set. 
17. Add details like hairs, feet and antennae using the food colour pens. 
18. Use remaining red and green line icing to pipe tint caterpillars around the edge of the white fondant.  
19. Leave to dry for at least 24 hours.

The Bridge Café @ The Avon Gorge Hotel, Bristol

Clifton Suspension Bridge (not taken from the Avon Gorge Hotel)

Having had a quick visit to Clifton Village back in December, I’d wanted to come back for a proper potter around the many independent shops for a while.  Having taken the day off for my birthday, it seemed like a great opportunity to visit. It was another beautiful frosty, sunny day in Clifton, although the bitter cold did mean that we didn’t spend quite as long wandering around as we may have done otherwise!  Clifton offers quite a few different tea and coffee shops, but, wanting something a bit special, we decided to walk a bit further up to the Bridge Café at the Avon Gorge Hotel, which offers beautiful views out over the Clifton Suspension Bridge. 

The entrance to the café is very understated and not very inspiring, but, once inside, the rooms are modern and classy. It was quiet, with only one other table occupied – possibly other people were put off by the cold, or it’s just not that known for afternoon tea. We sat on a table next to the windows, with great views, although a little chilly, which made us realise why the other table had chosen to sit back next to the open fire! There is a great outdoor space with lots of tables overlooking the fantastic views – this would be a fantastic place in the summer.

The afternoon tea menu was a little disappointing – I think that for somewhere with such a great location, they could draw many more people in if the menu was more exciting. I get the feeling that the café is more set up for lunch, with afternoon tea offered as a bit of an after-thought. The afternoon tea they offered only included two types of cake – West Country apple cake and Drambuie fruit cake, which didn’t particularly tempt me.  The only other cake available was their daily special, which, on the day we visited, was coffee and walnut. As we were eating out that evening and the menu wasn’t particularly inspiring, we decided not to do the whole afternoon tea option: I opted for the coffee and walnut cake and EHH chose to have the West Country apple cake and the Drambuie fruit cake (which was an option on the menu – he wasn’t just being piggy!).  We both chose to have lattes rather than tea (I figured that tea and coffee cake would be a strange combination!).  My latte came (as it all lattes should!) in a proper latte glass and was delicious, although it could have been hotter. My coffee and walnut cake was moist and tasty – reminding me how much I do like this type of cake (I don’t often make them as EHH doesn’t like coffee cake). EHH enjoyed his fruit cake and apple cake – although both were fairly small portions. The West Country apple cake was quite unusual – it was very dense, more like a pudding than a cake, but did have a nice flavour. His cakes also came served with three small chocolate truffles, which was a nice touch – these were delicious: very rich and velvety.

The staff were very pleasant but the service was really rather slow – particularly considering there were so few people there. There was quite a long gap between my cake arriving and EHH’s arriving, to the point where we thought they had forgotten about his order.

Overall, I felt that this café was a little disappointing as it could be so much better – the location is amazing but the choice of cake was limited, the cakes were ok but not mind-blowing and the service wasn’t quite up to standard.  Although it would be lovely in the summer to sit outside, there are lots of other options for tea and cake in Clifton and I’m not that tempted to return to this one.  

Cordial and Grace tea-rooms, Clifton Village

Last weekend, the pretty Georgian shopping quarter of Clifton Village was bathed in frosty sunlight and looking at its best – definitely a good choice for a stroll and morning coffee with my visiting family.  After a potter over the Clifton Bridge and a bit of window shopping around a few of the fantastic independent boutiques, it was time for a cup of tea and a bite to eat. Unsurprisingly, many of Clifton’s coffee shops were busy and, as there were five of us (Mum, my aunt (R), my brother (D) and his girlfriend (J)), it was a little difficult to find somewhere to seat us all. 

Although a little understated from the outside – possibly accounting for why they were not quite as busy as other places – once inside, Cordial and Grace tea-rooms are bright and modern with a fashionably kitsch feel.  They are a sewing café - apparently following a trend in Paris and Berlin and catering for the increasing market of crafters – and hire sewing machines by the hour as well as holding a wide variety of sewing workshops. 

There was a good variety of cakes available, including three types of mince pies, three different cream teas (including a savoury option), a chocolate and clementine marble cake, apricot and yoghurt cake, peanut butter brownies and home-made cookies. We loved that they had little tasters of a couple of the cakes and a taste of the apricot and yoghurt cake tempted me, J and R. The cake was a decent sized slice and lovely: moist, full of flavour and not-too-sweet – great for a mid-morning snack. D went for a peanut butter brownie – he was slightly disappointed by the size (definitely a girl-sized portion!) but not by the taste – he allowed me a crumb and it was rich, peanutty and delicious. 

I loved that the tea came served in mis-matched teacups and saucers – very fitting with the overall atmosphere of the tea-rooms. The tea itself was proper leaf tea and came with a very cute little egg timer – to let you know when the tea had brewed correctly! D had a big mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows, Mum had a latte and J had a Jasmine tea, which were all good. R ordered a white Americano but it came as a black Americano, but she decided to just use some of the milk provided with my tea, rather than asking for it to be changed.

Overall, I was impressed with this cute little café. Not sure if I’d return with EHH, but I’d definitely bring a couple of my girl friends – who would love it! I’ll definitely be back to Clifton in the near future though – I hadn’t been for a while and I’d love to have a bit more time (without a shopping-averse brother) to potter around all of the brilliant independent shops up there.