This is a tasty little bit of fun.
For me, there were very few celebratory events in the 90s that were not marked with a giant iced cookie from the shopping centre. I won’t mention brand names but you all know where we went!
There was something so special about having that enormous cookie presented to me, with as much Vanilla Frosting on there as possible (I thank my parents for a nine-letter name!), Recreate the fun at home with retro icing nozzles in a fraction of the time it takes to whip up a cake.

Cream together the butter and sugar for 3-5 minutes in a freestanding mixer or using an electric handwhisk. Golden caster sugar adds a lovely caramelly flavour but you can use regular caster sugar if this is all you have in.

Beat in the egg, vanilla bean paste, and golden syrup until fully combined. The golden syrup helps keep the biscuit ever so slightly soft.

Add the flour all in one go and mix until a dough forms. Press the dough into one flat, round patty, wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes. This will prevent the dough from expanding too much when you bake it.

Roll your cool dough out to a thickness of around 0.5″ (marzipan spacers on their higher setting will achieve this perfectly). Cut around a 10″ round cake tin or a large plate to make your giant biscuit. Place on a lined baking sheet and return to the fridge for 10-15 minutes.

Bake in a pre-heated oven for 20 minutes or until the top of the biscuit feels dry. When you are happy, remove the biscuit from the oven and allow to cool completely on the baking sheet.

Prepare a half-quantity of Classic Vanilla Buttercream and load into a disposable piping bag. I fit my piping bag with a coupler as this allows me to change my piping nozzle whenever I want to.

The trick to perfect message piping is to print out your text and trace onto baking parchment. The letters can then be poked through onto your biscuit using a cocktail stick or scribe tool. Pipe your message using a medium round piping nozzle.

Give your iced biscuit that perfect retro finish with a shell border around the outside edges. Fit your piping bag with a large open star nozzle and hold close to your biscuit edge, almost horizontally. Gently squeeze until a shell shape appears, stop squeezing and drag the frosting along the edge. Imagine you are writing – if you are right-handed, you will go left to right. Repeat so that each shell covers up the tail left by dragging.

Rosettes are easy. Just point your piping bag, still fitted with the large open star nozzle, straight down at the biscuit and squeeze until you are happy with the size. Stop squeezing, pull away and top each rosette with a dragee.