Pre-Christmas Baking

So about a month ago myself and a couple of friends were feeling a bit down so we decided to indulge in one of my friend's traditions of having a pre-christmas party. I have to say it was possibly the best idea we've ever had!!! We all decided that we were going to bake something for the party so we spent a morning making a complete mess of my kitchen while listening to Christmas songs and wearing Santa hats!!....In October! :)

I decided to make some gingerbread snowflake biscuits. Have to say they were pretty delicious! I will definitely be using this recipe again and again, in fact I might make some in a minute... Anyway here's the recipe!

Gingerbread Biscuits

(original recipe can be found here)

Ingredients

350g plain flour

1tsp ground ginger

1/2tsp ground cloves

1/2tsp ground cinnamon

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

100g butter

175g soft brown sugar

1 egg

4tbsp golden syrup

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Mix together the flour, spices and bicarbonate of soda.

2. Rub in the butter (using your fingertips) until it looks like breadcrumbs.

3. Add the sugar and mix.

4. In a separate bowl mix together the egg and golden syrup.

5. Mix the wet and dry ingredients together until it forms a dough.

6. Tip this out on to a clean, floured work surface and knead it until it's smooth.

7. Roll out the dough until it is about 0.5cm thick and then cut it out using whatever cutter you want/have.

8. Put the biscuits on a greased baking tray (I like to put grease proof paper on my baking trays too) and then bake in the oven for 10-15mins.

9. Ice if you want to!

I iced mine using royal icing. There it a specific way to ice biscuits using 2 different thicknesses of icing however after 3 biscuits I gave up on this method and just slapped it on using a palette knife, which worked quite well!! I then added some edible glitter or lustre dust to them to make them sparkle and shimmer like real snowflakes! I'm so incredibly excited to have edible glitter I wouldn't be surprised if everything incorporates it from now on.... Hehe!

My friends also made brownies, mince pies, white chocolate tarts and rum balls!! Lets commence with the silly pictures!