Stained-Glass Biscuits
21 December 2016
Get ready for the Christmas holidays with a touch of festive baking! The melted sweets in these biscuits look like tiny stained-glass windows when they catch the light. Make a mixture of some plain biscuits and some with sweet centres, and if you want to hang them from your tree as edible decorations, make a small hole in the top of each shape before baking them. The sweet mix is very hot as the biscuits come out of the oven, so take care.
Ingredients
Makes 12 cookies
- ✽ 100g (4oz) butter
- ✽ 275g (10oz) caster sugar
- ✽ ½ tsp vanilla extract
- ✽ 2 eggs
- ✽ 525g (18oz) plain flour
- ✽ 2 tsp baking powder
- ✽ 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- ✽ ½ tsp salt
- ✽ A little milk
- ✽ A handful of hard-boiled sweets, crushed (put candies of one colour in a clean, recycled-plastic bag and crush them with a rolling pin)
1. Preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F). Grease and line two large baking trays. Cream together the butter and sugar in a large bowl. Add the vanilla extract and stir in the eggs.
2. Sift the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt into a separate bowl. Add the egg mix and then the milk, a little at a time, and mix into a dough. Chill for 30 minutes.
3. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface until 5mm (¼in) thick. Cut shapes using a cutter. Use a smaller cutter to make the holes, and fill each with a few crushed sweets.
4. Bake for 10 minutes. Leave the baked cookies on the paper and transfer the paper onto a wire rack. Allow the cookies to cool completely before removing them from the paper.