Happy Faces
The day that we first saw Pimp That Snack.com was the day our lives were
given a purpose: we NEEDED to pimp a snack. Then, like most other people,
we spent a good few weeks trying to think of something to pimp that hadn’t
already been done – I was refusing to do a meat or gelatine related pimp
due to the disgustingness of the ingredients, and all the best names in
the confectionary and biscuit world had been done.or had they? We wandered
into Morrisons for some inspiration. Our answer was, quite literally,
staring at us in the face. Or should I say smiling.
Happy Faces!! Of course! All the goodness of a jam sandwich cream
(something which had recently been pimped which I had admired) but with a
range of expressions on the top biscuit – enough to put a smile on even
the toughest snack pimper’s face. So we bought all our biscuit
ingredients, were looked at oddly by the man at the checkout (or was it
woman? I sometimes can’t tell in Morrisons), and headed back to the
kitchen to start the pimp.
First job was the ‘research’. Ahem. Ten precious minutes and half a packet
of Happy Faces later, and all we’d established was that the Happy Face was
indeed made out of buttercreamy stuff and raspberry jam. There are a range
of expressions in a packet of Happy Faces, but after much deliberation we
decided the best one for pimping was the lopsided grinning face.
So, to the mixing bowl. We used the somewhat classic ingredients combo on
Pimp That Snack of 1 part sugar: 2 parts butter: 3 parts flour – or if you
don’t do ratios that’s 250g sugar, 500g butter and 750g of flour, adding
more and more until you have enough for 2 big circles of biscuit. We
melted the butter a bit in the microwave, and then used a smarmy Kenwood
mixing thingy, but any sort of mixing will be just fine.
Once the mix was done it had to be cooled in the fridge for half an hour.
We played the waiting game for a while then it was time to roll the mix
into two slabs about a quarter of an inch thick. LOTS of flour is required
for the rolling process, both on the surface and the rolling pin otherwise
it will stick like mad. We then made sure they were perfect circles with a
circular tin lid which worked well.
Getting the circles onto greased
baking trays was more tricky, repeat: LOTS of flour required! Then on side
we tried to recreate the strange face that appears on the happy face
biscuit using a skewer to mark out the lines before cutting them out with
a knife. Then it was into the oven (180 degrees for 25 minutes) which
undid some of our hard work as the mix expanded into the holes we had cut.
A quick trim with the knife restored them to their former glory.
Now it is assembly time! But we had run out of time for the day due to our
hectic social schedules, so all parts of the pimp were left in the fridge
overnight.this interlude turned out to be a mistake when I managed to
create a huge crack in the top biscuit the next day, disaster!
But we
pressed on as best we could. For the centre we used some seedless
raspberry jam and some buttercream stuff we made from 250g of butter and a
kilo of icing sugar.
There was too much of it but its sooo tasty that it
can just be munched as a snack (if you aren’t diabetic!). The jam and
cream is used to create the details on the eyes and mouth as well as stick
the two halves together.
The finished product
Tastes pretty damn good to be honest, especially the middle bit. Time for
a slice of happy face and a cup of tea I think.
Not bad for our first pimp, now we need to find something else to pimp to
the max!
