Christmas biscuits

Today’s Advent activity was to make Christmas biscuits. This is, I will admit, a little early for the big day itself, but I am sure we will make some more before then, and I did have a slight ulterior motive…

BigSmall’s pre-school are having a biscuit decorating stall at a Christmas Fayre on Saturday, and we need lots of biscuits.

So I decided to work smart, and combine the two.

I thought I would share with you our favourite Christmas biscuit recipe. It is from a book called ‘Spectacular Cakes’ by the cake decorating goddess that is Mich Turner. This is a great book-not only does it has some amazing yet acheivable cake decorations, but the recipes are delicious-I have tried nearly all of them, and have yet to find one that doesn’t hit the spot!

This recipe is for Mich’s Spice Cookies.

This is what you need:

250g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground ginger
125g soft butter
125g light brown soft sugar
50g ground almonds
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 large egg, beaten

This is what you do:

Line a baking sheet with non-stick baking paper (or I use the rubbery re-uesable sheets)
Sieve together the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger into a bowl
Rub in the butter until it looks like breadcrumbs (I did this in my free-standing mixer)
Stir in the sugar, ground almonds and almond extract
Stir in the beaten egg to bind the dough and knead into a neat ball.
Wrap in clingfilm, or place in a freezer bag, and place in the fridge to rest for 20mins
Pre-heat the oven to 180C/160C fan.gas mark 4
Lightly dust your worktop with flour and roll out the dough to about 5mm thick for small biscuits and about 1cm thick for bigger ones.

BigSmall having fun with the Christmas cutters

Place the biscuits on the prepared baking sheets and bake in the oven until they are golden around the edges (about 10mins for small biscuits, and 14mins for large ones)
Allow to cool for a couple of minutes before carefully lifting them onto a cooling rack to cool completely

You can then eat them, decorate them (and then eat them) or freeze them un-iced ready for nearer to Christmas.

We ate some. We will decorate some tomorrow. Doubtless with copious amounts of icing, and vast numbers of sprinkles. And I have put some in the freezer ready for the Fayre at the weekend.

Hope you enjoy!

Update: Here they are in all their iced glory…

I think is my particular favourite. I especially like the fact that all three snowmen are upside down…