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.

"Run, run as fast as you can...

...you can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!"

Is there anything more Christmassy than gingerbread? My Pinterest is full of peppermint recipes - is this an American thing? I don't really associate peppermint with Christmas, but gingerbread? Oh yes. Gingerbread can take on many different forms, depending where you're eating it. It can literally be a loaf that you cut into chunks to eat, or it can be thinner and more biscuit like, that break not with a crack but softly. This biscuit type of gingerbread is what we're talking about today, more specifically gingerbread men. The first gingerbread man was attributed to Elizabeth the First, who apparently presented foreign dignitaries with gingerbread men in their likeness. To me this seems like a fantastic way to get foreigners to like you - who doesn't love novelty shaped biscuits?

Over time the biscuits have taken on a more generic "man" shape, but you can really shape them however you want. Recipes also vary, but this is mine.

Gingerbread Men

325g Plain flour

1tsp Bicarbonate of soda

2tsp ground ginger

125g butter

100g brown sugar

4tbsp golden syrup

1. Put the butter, brown sugar and golden syrup in a sauce pan and melt down until it's smooth and shiny.

3. Add the dry ingredients to the pan.

4. Mix until a dough is formed and squash into a ball. It's wonderfully warm and squidgy, and you won't want to stop holding it. But you have to because it's time to roll it out! Cover your surface and your rolling pin in flour, and roll the dough out to just under a cm.

5. Use festive cookie cutters and cut the dough out into any shape you want. If you're artsy you could cut them out free hand, but I am not that creative!

6. Put in an oven preheated to 170°C for about 10 minutes, or until they're golden brown on top. Leave to cool.

7. Ice however you want, preferably in front of Strictly Come Dancing with a mug of hot chocolate. Very festive, very cosy. Try not to eat too many of the biscuits as you ice.