Vanilla Christmas biscuits and festivity

I’ve been trying to resist posting Christmas recipes for about a fortnight now. I adore Christmas, but I dislike how it seems to creep earlier into our consciousness each year. In my family, we don’t buy our tree or decorate ANYTHING until December first (and there are two birthdays in the family to focus on before December 25^th rolls around anyway.)

This year, however, I have caved; the combination of abundant free time and having the blog as an excuse to create delicious Christmas things means that I’m allowing myself a bit of a head start this year.

And what a start it is! These biccies are simple and adorable…and they don’t have to be Christmas themed if you don’t want!! I chose a star shaped cutter because I thought my family would scoff at my if I’d gone for the candy cane or Christmas tree shapes. The good thing about a basic biscuit mix like this is that it lends itself really well to any shape you want!

Also, these biccies are strong enough to go unflavoured – they’re sweet and soft all on their lonesome. You can, however, add other flavourings or additives like choc chips if you fancy.

This mixture made about 12 biscuits, but I used quite a large cutter.

I made this recipe to be featured in Bed Love Home’s newsletter, and was really happy with the result, so I thought I’d share them here as well!

Vanilla Christmas biscuits:

• 125g butter
• ¼ cup sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup plain flour
• 2 tbsp cornflour
• 2 tbsp water
• 80g white chocolate
• Silver cachous to decorate

Whizz your butter and sugar together until well combined. Add the vanilla, flour and cornflour and mix thoroughly. Pop the water into the mixture to help it stick together better. If all of the flour hasn’t combined properly, add extra water, one tablespoon at a time, but ensure that the mixture stays dry, and doesn’t start to turn tacky.

Using your hands, knead the dough in the bowl for 30 seconds, picking up any excess mixture that may be left; the heat from your hands will help the dough to hold better as well. Roll the mixture into a ball, wrap it in cling wrap and pop it in the fridge for ten minutes.

Preheat your oven to 160° and line two baking trays with baking paper.

Lightly flour a clean surface and roll out your chilled dough to your desired thickness (I made my biscuits about 5mm thick, but they can be thicker) and use your Christmas cookie cutter to cut as many shapes out of the dough as possible. Line your baking trays with biscuits, re-roll the dough and repeat.

If you’d like to hang your biscuits, use a knife with a thin point (like a steak knife) and make a neat hole at one point of the biscuit, not too close to the edge.

Pop the baking trays into the oven for 15 minutes and give them a few minutes two cool before transferring to a cooling rack.

Once the biscuits are cool, ice them with a ½ a cup of icing sugar and a small amount of water mixed with red food colouring. I only iced half of the biscuits, but drizzled chocolate on all of them. Allow any of your biscuits with icing to set in the fridge, then melt your chocolate and spoon it into a snap lock bag. Snip a tiny corner off the snap lock bag and drizzle zig zags across your biscuits. Dot with cachous where desired and thread some festive ribbon through the hole.

Set in the fridge for at least 15 minutes and serve or hang! I don’t recommend hanging for long though – they’re too delicious to leave, and should be kept in an air tight container when not being eaten.