Christmas Cookies Decorations

It’s only the start of December but already the Christmas season has begun. The shops have been promoting Christmas for a whole month and the Christmas TV adverts are now in full swing. This has led me to put up our Christmas tree a week earlier than I normally would. Christmas just seems to give you a lift and that’s exactly what putting the tree up did for me. So much so that I got inspired to make some cookies to hang on the tree.

However I don’t expect the cookies to last, already they seem to be disappearing from the tree, and of course freshly baked cookies are irresistible. It will be an excuse to make another batch in a few days. These are great gifts to bring to friends and neighbours also, a great novelty and very thoughtful, meaning you’ll climb to the top of their Christmas list.

The cookies taste wonderful, but I must admit my artistic decorations is not my strongest point. Decorating cookies I found to be extremely challenging, however I can guarantee that they will taste great! If you have little ones, then decorating the cookies is a great way to get them involved in the baking process. It would be worth going to the store and picking up a few Christmas cookie cutters, just to make the cookies more festive. I didn’t have any at the time of making the cookies, but certainly my next attempt with involve Christmas cookie cutters and a paint brush for a more professional finish.

Ingredients

·         350g of plain flour, sifted

·         125g of butter, softened and cubed

·         1 tsp of bicarbonate soda

·         Pinch salt

·         1 tsp of ground cinnamon

·         175g of soft brown sugar

·         1 large free range egg, beaten

·         5 tbsp of golden syrup

To decorate

·         100g of icing sugar, mixed with a little water

·         Red food colouring

·         Icing sugar for dusting

·         50g of chocolate, melted

Method

·         Add the flour, bicarbonate soda, salt, and cinnamon to the bowl of a food processor and mix until combined.

·         Add in the sugar and mix well.

·         Add the butter and mix until the ingredients resemble breadcrumbs.

·         Add the syrup to the beaten egg and mix to combine.

·         With the food processor on the slowest setting, add the egg/syrup mixture and incorporate into the dry ingredients.

·         Tip the dough out onto a floured surface, knead lightly to bring the dough together and wrap in cling film.

·         Refrigerate the dough for 15 minutes and preheat the oven to 180 degrees

·         Prepare a baking tray by lining it with baking paper.

·         When the dough has had its 15 minutes remove from the fridge and roll out to a thickness of 1cm.

·         Using a cookie cutter, stamp out the cookies and place them on the baking tray, allowing for plenty of room in between each cookie.

·         If you are intending to hang the cookies, using a skewer, insert a ting hole for the string to hang.

·         Bake in the oven for 13 minutes.

·         Allow to cool in the tray for 10 minutes on a wire rack before placing them on the wire rack individually to cool completely.

To Decorate

(Note: I’m rather crap at this part, but I’m sure the average person would fare better than me.) When in doubt dip in chocolate.

To make red icing paste, sift icing sugar into a bowl and add a few drops of water at a time. Add 4 drops of food colouring.

To decorate I used a small piping bag, its important to have thick icing paste though, so if it’s too watery add more icing sugar.

To melt the chocolate, simply break the chocolate into pieces into a bowl and microwave at 60 sec bursts, stirring in between. Then just dip the cookies into the chocolate and allow to cool.

I dusted the cookies with icing sugar, but you cool add sprinkles or edible stars or whatever you fancy. There are no rules when decorating be as adventurous or as subtle as you wish.