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.

Mince Pie Cupcakes with Brandy Buttercream

Mince pies are great, truly a food of the season. But sometimes you need to mix things up a bit, and make something new. Which is why I bring to you mince pie flavour cupcakes. Cupcakes with a bit of mincemeat mixed in to them topped off with brandy buttercream, to replace the brandy pouring cream so frequently paired with mincepies. I was really pleased with my idea, and less pleased when I googled it and found hundreds of variations on the theme. Nevertheless, I had fun making them and they are really tasty, so here is the recipe for my mince pie cupcakes.

Mince Pie Cupcakes

112g Unsalted butter
112g Caster sugar
2 Free range eggs
125g Mince meat
110g Self raising flour
1tsp Baking powder
A splash of brandy

Brandy Buttercream
220g Icing Sugar
100g Unsalted butter
A splash of brandy

1. Cream the butter and sugar

 
2. Mix in two eggs. Aren't they a lovely golden colour?

3. Add the mincmeat

4. And the self raising flour and baking powder

5. Add a splash of brandy - it's up to you how generous you're feeling, although you may need an extra tablespoon of flour if you add a lot

6. The mix is quite a thick mix, droppable I think is how it's usually described

Let's just take a moment to admire to Christmas aspects of this bake - my beautiful sparkly spatula, M&S's finest, and the lovely Paperchase cupcake cases, which halfway through baking I realised may or may not belong to Anna. She's eaten cupcakes though, so I'm sure she doesn't mind too much...

7. Fill your cupcake cases. These cakes don't rise too much, so you can be quite generous.

8. Pop into the oven at 180°C for 15-20 minutes. Perhaps not quite as long as I left them this time... oopsies. Ignoring the slightly burnt edges, look at them. Aren't they cute? But I think they're missing something. They're begging to be iced...

9. So leave them to cool, whip up your buttercream and put it in a piping bag. Pipe swirls, and sprinkle with edible glitter for a final Christmassy sparkle. 

 10. If you're not feeling the piping - let's face it sometimes you just want a cupcake, you don't want to get all sticky filling a piping bag - you can just smear the icing on the top. I promise it tastes just as good.

I'm going to be showing you a few more of my favourite Christmas recipes over Advent, but I'd love to hear about some of your favourite sweet treats for this time of the year too!

Do you hear what I hear?

Do you? I can hear carols creeping onto radio playlists, cards landing on the floor of the porch with a thump, and the rustling of wrappers from the chocolates in an advent calendar. I can hear Christmas, just around the corner. Advent wreaths will be lit in churches all around the world today, and the countdown begins. Settle down today with a mince pie and a hot chocolate and take a moment of peace. Try not to let the next few weeks descend into complete mayhem. Just enjoy it. Happy Advent!