Iced Biscuits {Day 8 - 12 Days of Christmas at Sprout's House}

Twelve Days of Christmas at Sprout's House

Day 8 of Twelve Days of Christmas is a delicious shortbread biscuit….

What you need –

Biscuits:

325g plain flour

200g chilled salted butter, cut into small chunks

125g golden caster sugar

2tsp good quality vanilla extract

2 large free range egg yolks –keep the egg whites for the icing

1 lemon, zest finely grated

Icing:

1 tbsp lightly beaten egg white

1 tbsp lemon juice

200g icing sugar>

small handful silver balls

star shaped cutters

ribbon, for hanging on the tree

Time: 30 minutes (Cooking times are based on stars 10cm wide - adjust time for smaller or larger stars.)

The recipes can be found here and here.

Preheat your oven to 180C/ gas 4/fan 160C and grease 2 baking sheets. Add the flour into a food processor. Then add the butter into small pieces, and whizz until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Next, add the sugar, vanilla and egg yolks, and whizz again until the mixture comes together into a dough.

Roll out the dough so it is about ½cm thick. Cut out star biscuits and repeat the process with any extra dough you have left over. Use a skewer to make a small hole about 1cm from a point on each star. Make the hole slightly bigger than you need as it will close up a little as the stars bake.

Bake for 18-20 minutes until the star begin to turn golden around the edges. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. (Re-skewer the holes at this point if you need to.)

Put the egg white and lemon juice in a bowl. Then beat in the icing sugar to make a smooth icing – add more egg white if needed. Add the icing to a piping bag and decorate as desired. Stick silver balls on before the icing dries and leave to set. Thread ribbon through each of the holes and hang on your tree. Or eat within 24 hours!