Stained Glass Christmas tree biscuits
These biscuits are a little like shortbread, with a stunning "window" effect that looks amazing on your Christmas tree
Ingredients
- 1 bag Clear fruit boiled sweets we use Glacier Fruits
- 225 g Unsalted butter softened
- 200 g Caster sugar
- 1 egg lightly beaten
- Half tsp vanilla extract
- Pinch salt
- 450 g plain flour
Instructions
- Separate the sweets into colours, place in sealed plastic bags, and bash with the end of a rolling pin until broken into chunks.
- Mix the butter and sugar and cream until light and fluffy.
- Add the egg, vanilla and salt and mix in.
- Gradually add the flour and mix to a smooth dough.
- Cover with clingfilm and chill in the fridge for an hour or so, or until firm enough to roll easily.
- On a floured surface, roll the dough to around 5mm thick, and cut out whatever shapes you need. Your cutters need to be fairly big, to allow room for a hole in the middle. Stamp out holes in the middle of each biscuit – we experimented for a while before finding that the cap from a bottle of Chablis was the perfect size for our snowflakes. Lucky for Daddy…
- Lay the biscuits on a baking-paper covered tray. Fill each hole with a different colour of the broken sweets.
- Use a straw to stamp a small hole in each biscuit. Once baked, you will thread a ribbon through this hole to hang the biscuit on the tree. If you’re not going to hang them, you can omit this step.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes until pale golden and firm to the touch. The magic is that the sweet chunks melt in the heat of the oven, but firm up once they’re out to leave clear coloured “glass” in the centre of the biscuit. Leave them to cool, then get creative.
- At this point you could just devour these delicious treats, but if you are gifting them, or hanging them on the tree, we recommend wrapping first. Thread a length of decorative ribbon through each small hole and tie at the top to make a loop for hanging. We also chose to wrap our biscuits for hygiene and because it looks pretty! We used clear cellophane paper, which we found in Paperchase.