Christmas Cookies : )

Hello lemon bon bons how are you all today? I have had the most ridiculously lazy day ever. I didn't wake up until 11 (no alarm clock in half term!) and then allowed myself to stay in bed til half 12. It was so nice not having to rush around for anything, I am going to enjoy it while it lasts! I decided to have a practice run making some Christmas biscuits today so set off later in the afternoon for a couple of ingredients from Tesco. Here's how I got on...

1) Get all of your ingredients ready, you will need 2 tsp of vanilla extract, 250g butter, 140g caster sugar, 1 yolk of  an egg and 300g plain flour. The cookie cutters to the right were a Christmas present from my mother in law and were perfect for creating festive shapes.

2) After weighing out the ingredients, mix the butter and sugar together with a wooden spoon until light and creamy.

3) Stir in the egg yolk and vanilla extract and beat in quickly. Then sift the flour and continue to stir in. Towards the end, you will have to get your hands in in order to turn the mixture into a firm dough.

4) Flour the kitchen surface and roll the dough out with a rolling pin. Use the cookie cutters to cut out shapes., and evenly space them out on a greased non-stick baking sheet. Cook in the oven for 12 minutes at 180 degrees, and then place them on a wire rack to cool.

5) Decorate! I used an icing sugar mix to create the white icing, and a sprinkling of icing sugar on a few as hubby is not such a big fan of icing as I am! You could experiment with different colours and toppings too as I intended to (but ran out of time!) Still, I like the white, I think it looks like snow, simple and effective : )

So there you have it, I think they turned out quite well for my first attempt, however, I have learnt some lessons for next time:

1) The icing sugar mix was quite messy and tricky to apply so next time I may try some ready to roll icing stuck down on top of the biscuit with apricot jam.
2) I am going to buy some tubes of different coloured writing icing as it will be quick and easy to create designs then without having to use my piping bag.
3) Make sure I only using my baking sheets (I used a regular cooking tray with one load of biscuits, and despite being greased it was not non-stick at all, so all the biscuits on that tray broke up).
4) Remove my wedding rings beforehand - when kneading the dough, it all got stuck between my diamonds, meaning I had to use an old toothbrush and washing up liquid to scrub it all out afterwards!)

Love to you all, more soon xoxo