Basic Iced Vanilla Biscuits

There's always a time for simplicity, and it's all the time.

I thought about initially, having a complex piped coloured icing, but I don't really like garish colours and frustratingly delicate piping, so I simply spoon on the icing and sprinkle on silver edible ball bearings in a reassuringly juvenile fashion.

1)In a large bowl beat 125g soft unsalted butter with 100g caster sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in one egg (it's useful to crack the egg in a bowl first so you can remove any shell easily) with 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla. Bean paste is great as you can see the little black dots. Fold in 200g of plain flour with half a teaspoon of baking powder and a pinch of salt. Mix it to form a soft crumble, then use your hands to very gently press it to a ball of dough. Do not overwork, as that makes it tough. Wrap in cling film and place in the fridge for a good half an hour to firm up.

2)Roll the dough out to a 1/2 cm thickness, (do not have any kind of ruler within reach- we're talking very roughly speaking) dust the cutters of your choice in flour and boldly gouge out a shape then place it on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Part of the ritual of this is getting as many shapes as possible out of this lump of sun tan dough- avoid handling it too much between go's and don't knead in any extra flour. Eventually you will hit, what bakers like to call the trawl, where you have such a tiny sheet of dough left you won't be able to protract another shape; to solve this I pick little nuggets of biscuit and scatter them on the sheet which of course become the crunchiest, darkest and best biscuits of the batch. This dough makes an average-sized batch of biscuits of about 16, but obviously this depends on the cutter used.

3)Bake at 180 degrees, for about 10-15 minutes, but start checking at about 8 minutes, as they can overcook very suddenly. When golden all over, take them off the sheet with a palette knife and let them cool on a wire rack.

4)Prepare the glace icing- In a bowl, combine 300g icing sugar with water- go a tablespoon at a time until you have a thick but malleable icing. If you want to go in for food colouring, which I certainly don't sneer at, I would highly recommend going for the thick gooey paste which comes in tubs or squeezy tubes which will last you a lifetime because you need only use a tiny dab to dye the icing resplendently.
5)Using a teaspoon to dollop on the icing and the back of it to smooth the top. Return it to the wire rack with a board underneath it to catch any drips and sprinkle with whatever you like, but I just went with silver ball bearings. I have to admit, having not bothered with sieving icing sugar recently, I have noticed that the difference it makes is minimal if completely inconspicuous- perhaps it's time to give that sieve an early retirement?