Superbowl biscuits

Pre-heat the oven to 160C/140C Fan/Gas 3. Line two baking trays with baking paper. Put the butter, caster sugar and syrup in a pan and stir over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved and the butter melted (don't allow the mixture to boil). Remove from the heat.

Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger and cinnamon into a mixing bowl. Add the butter mixture and eggs, then mix to make a stiff dough. Wrap in cling film and chill for 20 minutes.

Roll out on a floured surface to 4mm thick. The recipe should make 23 football biscuits. The easiest way to make football shapes is to either use a knife to cut out the shape ‘freestyle’ or make yourself a template to cut around. But this is definitely an adult’s job. Place on the trays and bake for 10-12 minutes.

Remove from the oven and leave for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Mix the royal icing sugar with 75ml of water to make a paste. This is enough to cover all the biscuits.

You then need to split the mixture in two, and put each half in separate bowls. Then take 1tbsp of icing out of one of the bowls and put in another separate bowl. The big bowl will be the brown colour of the footballs. Add three teaspoons of orange colouring, half a teaspoon of red colouring, one teaspoon of blue colouring and a drop or two of black colouring into the icing and stir together. In the smallest bowl of icing add a few drops of black colouring and stir until you get the desired colour. The other bowl should be left white.

Now comes the fun part. Take three piping bags and spoon each coloured icing into a separate bag. Push the icing to the pointy end of the bag.

Snip off a very tiny hole at the end (no more than a couple of millimetres), and draw an outline of each part of the football, as in the picture. Once you have drawn out the basic shapes on ALL the biscuits, you can snip off more of the end of your piping bag and fill in the middle. Then you can finish each one with the black colouring. Leave to dry.