All Iced Up With Snip & Swirl

You should know by now that I have a passion for food.  What you may not know is how much I love to bake cakes, biscuits and buns!  The only part I don't like, or succeed well at is the icing part, it never tastes good when I make it, there is always too much sugar that it makes peoples teeth hurt, or too much butter and it ends up being a sickly mess left in the bowl.

So when Renshaw's asked me to test their new Milk Chocolate Snip and Swirl icing it seemed like the perfect solution to my baking problems.  I just had to bake some buns to test it out! 

As the name suggests, simply snip the ready-filled bag of deliciously rich icing using one of the two markings on pack and swirl on to cupcakes to achieve mouth-watering, expert results.  And any baker who has ever had to clean out a piping bag will be sure to appreciate the disposable packaging. 

So for those of you that are non-bakers, here is my Grandmother's recipe for Victoria Sponge Buns, I have used it ever since I first started baking, non of this fat less sponge malarkey, this is a full fat, traditional sponge mix!

You will need

• 4oz Self Rasing Flour
• 4oz Butter
• 4oz Castor Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• Bun Cases or Muffin Cases

Pre-Heat your oven to Gas Mark 5

Cream the butter and sugar together until it's pale and creamy in colour using a wooden spoon.

Add the eggs and beat into the mixture until it's smooth

Sieve the flour into the mixture a little at a time and fold in with a metal spoon gently but trying to get as much air as possible into thie mixture so your buns are light and fluffy.

When the flour is mixed in, share the mixture between your bun cases, usually a heaped teaspoon per small bun case does the job, if you use muffin cases, you will get less buns!

Bake in the oven for 25-30 mins then place on a cooling rack to cool before icing...

So they cooled well and we snipped the top off the packet...

There were 2 possible options for this, a zig zag effect cut, or a straight one, I opted to go with the zig zags.  It went on rather easily at first but there were no clear instructions as to how much to use so I thought I would make all my buns look pretty and ice them in the same style as the picture on the front of the box!  It took a while to get the knack of it, but by the time I had finished them all I was icing like a pro cake baker!  I left them to set for about five minutes, it was long enough to make a cup of tea and wash my hands, they were soooo sticky and goo-ey from the icing.  We tried them out...

RRP: £2.49 per 400g pack (tops 12 cupcakes)

 
The icing tasted nice, it was really chocolatey and felt silky and smooth in my mouth but after half a bun it was far too rich and sickly, even though the packet stated it topped 12 cupcakes and I had made a few more than that, so I scraped some off and K put it on digestive biscuits whilst watching a DVD!  Misteright and I finished off the buns and decided they were much better with less icing on them.

You can buy Renshaw products  from LakeLand, HobbyCraft, Morrisons, Tesco and Asda

I received some renshaw Baking Products in chocolate flavours for the purpose of this review