Christmas Stained Glass Window Biscuits

Now that it's FINALLY the 1st of December, it's definitely time to get the Christmas baking in full swing. I saw these beautiful stained glass window biscuits on Pinterest, and they really couldn't be easier to make. You can hang them in your window or on your tree, and add some homespun beauty to your decorations. Don't do what I did, which is realise you have nothing to hang them off and then spend an hour browsing trees online, when you really could have been doing other things!

Using Christmas shaped cookie cutters, you put a seasonal hole in the middle of your average biscuit. You then fill the hole with crushed up boiled sweets and bake. It only takes 8-10 minutes in the oven for the cookies to be cooked and the sweets to melt. Better yet, you can keep the inside cut outs and bake them too! They're perfect bite size biscuits, and you can keep them in a tin to serve with coffee over the festive period.

Christmas Stained Glass Window Biscuits
150g Butter
100g Light Brown Sugar
1 Egg
250g Plain Flour
1tsp Baking Powder
1tbsp Mixed Spice
1tsp Vanilla
Boiled Sweets

1. Preheat the oven to 180oC and line your baking tray with greaseproof paper.
2. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add the egg.
3. Mix in the flour, baking powder, mixed spice and vanilla until a dough forms.
4. Dust a clean work surface with flour and then roll out the dough until it's about 1cm thick.
5. Cut out the full cookie shape, and then the smaller one. (I used pre made cutters I got for Christmas last year, but you could easily make your own, or cut out shapes freehand if you're artistically inclined!)
6. Separate boiled sweets by colour, put them in a sandwich bag and crush with a rolling pin (this is harder than you'd think, and also I managed to break the sandwich bag and get little shards of boiled sweets all over my kitchen. Don't do that guys. Maybe put some kitchen roll over the bag before you smash).
7. Fill the gaps in the middle of the biscuit with the boiled sweets and then bake for 8-10 minutes.
8. Baking the cut out centres will only take 5-7 minutes because they're so tiny.