Orange Iced Gems (and update on blackberry gems)

Now that Chinese New Year is approaching and Mandarin oranges are in abundance, why not try to make some orange iced gems :).

These were made from regular oranges but it can be substituted with mandarin oranges. Someone requested for orange and black/blueberry iced gems so I made an assortment of gems!

All prettily naturally coloured! 

Before I share the recipe for orange iced gems, I will provide a quick update on the blackberry gems. As you can see from my previous attempt, the blackberry gems were pale purple in colour and have more of a pinkish tinge. I had to add a teeny toothpick dip of blue to get it to look a bit more purple. My second attempt here is a much deeper and vibrant purple. I added a few dried blue pea flowers to the black/blueberry puree (about 1.5tbs puree), mashed them in and leave to steep for half an hour before straining. Very pleased with the result and it's all natural!

Feel free to double, triple or quardruple the recipe as this is a small batch.

Ingredients (makes about 30 gems):

Biscuit base

35g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

5g icing sugar

Pinch of salt

1/2 tsp finely grated orange zest (I used 1 tsp and find it's a bit too much. Remember not to grate the white part of the skin or the biscuit will be bitter.)

12g vegetable shortening

14g milk

1/8 tsp vanilla extract (or orange essence/emulco if you wish)

Orange royal icing

56g icing sugar

4g meringue powder

8g fresh orange juice (Use more or less as required to get stiff peaks. Remember to add a bit at a time.)

2 drops of orange emulco (added to orange juice)

Steps:

Please refer to my fresh berry gems post for the steps with slight modifications....

Add orange zest after rubbing in the shortening. Mix well before adding in the milk.

Stamping out circles!

Freshly baked!

Freshly iced!

A close-up view of freshly iced biscuits! Remember to pipe some icing on baking sheet as a gauge of whether the icing on biscuits are dry.

I must confess that I had two failed batches of orange royal icing before I succeeded. The first time I tried adding orange zest, knowing that I might fail as orange peel contains oil. Oil and royal icing are not good friends. The icing will not dry if there's any trace of oil. I had trouble getting the right consistency on my second attempt and reduced the amount of juice as compared to other flavours for my third (successful) attempt. For some reason orange royal icing needs a lot less juice to have the right consistency.

I am having fun experimenting with different flavors of iced gems :). Keep a lookout for new flavours in my future posts!

With love,
Phay Shing