# Week 2: Biscuits aka Cookies

By Garrett (Bear) · 2026-10-03 · https://ricottabear.com/week-2-biscuits-aka-cookies

Series: Tent Ready, week 2

> AI summary: Garrett baked Prue’s ginger biscuits away from home with a toddler, no scale and an oven running 75 degrees hot. They tasted good; the icing was thin and the decoration not very uniform. His biggest lesson: use a scale.

Prue’s ginger biscuits in my parents’ kitchen, with a toddler, a broken oven and no scale. Well, I did it!

## The story

Before the bake

As an American watching The Great British Bake Off (GBBO), it always grinds my gears hearing them call cookies biscuits. To be honest it had me quite confused and I still google what the difference is. You always hear Paul Hollywood talk about the snap of a biscuit and Prue would mention the crunch, so this inspired me to go for Prue’s ginger biscuit recipe. This is also good to learn for building a showstopper structure, which is why I chose it.

A few points of concern as I lead into week 2:

I’ll be traveling this week and using my parents’ kitchen

No childcare help, so I will be juggling a toddler and this bake. (Please take a nap little buddy)

My parents’ oven has a broken temp gauge so it’s a guessing game

My decorating skills are beginner level and I won’t have Jana to cheer me on in the back

Guest judges: going to ask a friend in the area to give his review

Hot outside which equals hot kitchen

No scale, so I’m going to be a classic American using measuring cups

After the bake

Well, I did it! This week had some serious nightmares but at the end of the day I survived well and I’m happy with the taste. All my points of concern became true. Toddler didn’t nap much so a lot of tears were shed, I won’t say who (me). The oven was set at 350 but was running at 425, so I had to set it to almost 300 to get it close to correct. Would love to find an appliance sponsor who can help get my parents a new oven.

My ginger biscuits tasted pretty good and the decorations weren’t too bad. As Jana stated to me, “not very uniform”. Honestly had to pivot my design about 4 times to come up with something realistic.

My challenges and lessons learned

If you’re icing the full biscuit go thicker (I feel like I went a little too thin on these)

Make sure you have an oven with accurate temperature

Icing got kinda hard, so it was hard to do cute/perfect designs. Maybe too much powdered sugar? Needed some more liquid

Making and doing black food coloring is a terrible idea. It’s a lot of food coloring and it bled into the other colors after 1 day

Toddler distraction made me have to break this challenge up into making the dough the night before and finishing the next day

Doing a face design is never a good idea

Might have over baked them a little

Use a scale! Omg I am forever going to be a scale baker from now on. It makes so much more sense.

I call this week a win with good flavors and a good starter for decorating. Next week should be really interesting with weather at home reaching over 100 degrees F, it will make for a nice hot kitchen.