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Week 26, Bake 26.

I haven't baked biscuits in ages and recently thought that my bakes were just getting a bit too repetitive; pastry, bread, pastry, bread etc... so I thought that this week would be a biscuit week. So I decided to make lemon Iced Gems, the brilliant treat from my childhood.

Makes approximately 60 Iced gems

Ingredients:

• 150g of salted butter
• 100g of caster sugar
• the juice and zest of a lemon finely grated
• 75g of full-fat cream cheese
• 300g of plain flour
• a good pinch of baking powder
• 100g of icing sugar
• 50g of butter (for butter cream icing)
• a splash of milk
• food colouring

Method:

1. Put the soft butter into a large mixing bowl and beat until light and fluffy.
2. Now add the caster sugar and continue beating.
3. Pop the lemon zest in and mix it in until evenly dispersed.
4. Now beat in three teaspoons of the lemon juice and the cream cheese. (Save the rest of the lemon juice for icing).
5. Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture and carefully fold it in, using your hands to make a firm dough.
6. Wrap in cling film and let it rest in the fridge for 20 minutes. At this point you can divide it up if you wish to freeze it.
7. Pre-heat the oven to 180c and remove the dough from the fridge.
8. Lightly flour a surface, then make the dough into a long sausage and continue to make the sausage thinner and thinner until it is about 1-1 1/2 inches wide.
9. Now flour a knife and slice the dough to make discs. Put the discs onto a baking sheet and cook for 5-10 minutes (or until the discs become lightly golden in coloured).
10. Now cool them on a wire rack whilst you prepare the icing.
11. Beat the butter into a small bowl and slowly add in the icing sugar. Once it is all incorporated add a splash of milk.
12. Divide the icing into bowls then add in a drop of the colour into each (to make them into pastel colours like Iced Gems).
13. Mix it in then using a large star shaped piping nozzle, pipe a dollop onto each of the biscuits.
14. Now your done, pop them into your mouth and eat them!