Christmas QAL - July pt8 - Biscuit recipe

I think that I'm going to chicken out of the egg nog - I made my mind up on this when I was beating the egg for these biscuits, and thought, 'can I drink this?'. No.

OK, so that Fail aside, let's get a load of these BISCUITS!

The recipe is from the BBC website, and makes about 2 dozen biscuits.

Christmas Biscuits

Ingredients

100g/3½oz unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
100g/3½oz caster sugar
1 free-range egg, lightly beaten
275g/10oz plain flour
1 tsp vanilla extract

To decorate
400g/14oz icing sugar
2-3 drops food colourings

Preparation method

1. Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5.
2. Cream the butter and sugar
3. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract
4. Stir in the flour until the mixture comes together as a dough.
5. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured work surface to a thickness of 1cm/½in.
6. Using biscuit cutters, cut biscuits out of the dough and carefully place onto greased baking trays.
7. Bake the biscuits for 8-10 minutes, or until pale golden-brown. Set aside to harden for 5 minutes, then cool on a wire rack.
8. For the icing, sift the icing sugar into a large mixing bowl and stir in enough water to create a smooth mixture. Stir in the food colouring.
9. Carefully spread the icing onto the biscuits using a knife and sprinkle over the glitter. Set aside until the icing hardens.

Shall I tell you what would work here:  A pinch of cinnamon.  I only came up with this particular brainwave as I was icing them though. Tut!.

Oh - top tip for icing - if you make the icing in a shallow bowl, you can dip the top of each biscuit, shake off the excess icing, whip it upright, and you have lovely edge to edge icing with very little mess.

And finally - take no notice of '2 or 3 drops of food colouring' - the icing needs more than that - and mine still turned out lime green and pink, rather than Christmassy green and red.

Taste good though.