Christmas Baking: Stained Glass Biscuits
Amanda Maister and Kirstie Beaven revisit a childhood favourite.
There are loads of benefits to baking and making together. Weighing and measuring are maths skills, reading recipes are literacy skills. Rolling out and cutting dough is good for fine motor skills, while handling the tools are good for co-ordination. But the best thing about baking together is shared time. And delicious things to eat at the end of it.
These pretty biscuits are perfect for hanging on the tree if you can keep any of them long enough for that.
Ingredients
250g plain flour
125g butter
125g brown sugar
1 small egg, beaten
2 tsp mixed spice
Pinch of salt
Fruit-flavoured boiled sweets
To Make
Preheat the oven to 180 C.
It’s quickest to make the dough in the food processor if you have one, but you can do it all by hand too. Whizz the butter and sugar together, then add the egg. Now add all the dry ingredients and mix together till you have a lovely dough.
Chill in the fridge while you get ready for rolling out. Get a few of the sweets out and give them bash with your rolling pin to half them. Mind your fingers! (You can put them under a teatowel so bits don’t fly everywhere.)
Roll out the dough to about 1/2cm thick – don’t be tempted to go too thin or the biscuits will burn. Cut out large shapes for the biscuits and then smaller shapes from the middle of each biscuit. Don’t forget to make a small hole for the string if you’re planning to hang them as decorations.
Lay your biscuits on greaseproof paper or a silicon sheet on a baking tray and put half a boiled sweet in each hole. You can put in smaller bits of two different colours if you fancy a mixed ‘glass’ pane.
Bake for 7-9 minutes, but keep an eye on them in case your oven is hotter or colder. You want the sweets to melt without the biscuits burning.
Leave to cool a little so the stained glass sets before you take them off the greaseproof paper to cool properly on a wire rack.
See All in Issue 8
Advent calendars are big business these days. Kirstie Beaven remembers some advent traditions and suggests a new one.