Stencils are great for creating beautiful, intricate patterns that look both time consuming and complex, when in fact they are very simple to do and dont take that long!
Stencils can be used in several different ways to create lots of different effects.
The first way involves using ROYAL ICING. This is icing that is made with egg white and icing sugar. You use one egg white and then mix in enough icing sugar to create a toothpaste type consistency.
Tip* The advantage of using royal icing is that it sets hard so you don’t have to worry about it smudging later on!
Once you have rolled out your sugarpaste you simply lay the stencil over the top. You can tack it down with a very small blob of royal icing on each edge, or a little dab of water underneath the stencil, but i find just by holding them with finger and thumb they stay in place.
You then use a pallette knife to scrape the royal icing across the stencil. I make sure i am using the broad side of the knife and take it gently. This takes a little practice but you get the hang of it quickly enough.
Once you have covered the whole stencil wait for a minute of so and then gently peel back the stencil. You will be left with the beautiful design on the sugarpaste ready to be cut out with whatever cutters you are using.
These stenciled sugarpaste shapes can then be laid over your cookies, tacked down with a little more royal icing on the biscuit and there you have it, beautiful intricate biscuits.
I use one stencil to get two or three cutter shapes out of one stencil as this saves time. It takes along longer if you just get one shape out of each stencil!
Tip: I tried to go again with the same stencil a second time and found it got really messy and didnt work very well, so now i gently rinse them between attempts. The stencils can be quite fragile so after rinsing i press them between a T-towel to dry them, rather than rubbing them. It only takes 30 seconds but then you have a nice clean dry stencil to do your next design with.
For a beautiful selection of stencils, look here:
http://www.lindyscakes.co.uk/OnlineShop-Stencils.htm
