Stained Glass Christmas Biscuits

I bake these biscuits every year, to decorate our tree and to give as gifts.  They are so easy to make, look very festive and always go down well.  My daughters love giving these to their friends with a homemade Christmas card attached, they seem to suddenly have rather a lot of friends this time of year.

Stained Glass Christmas Biscuits 

175g butter, softened

100g caster sugar

2 tsp vanilla bean paste

1 tsp ground cinnamon

225g plain flour

1 pack boiled sweets, I used a supermarket value brand

Preheat your oven to 160°C/140°C Fan/Gas Mark 3.  Line two baking sheets with non-stick baking paper.

Put the butter and sugar into a bowl and, using a stand mixer or hand held electric beater, beat until pale and smooth.  Add the flour and mix to bring the dough together by hand.

Wrap the dough in cling film and leave to rest and chill for half an hour in the fridge.  Take the dough out of the fridge and roll out on a lightly floured work surface using a rolling pin until the dough is 0.5cm thick.

Use a large Christmas themed cutter to cut shapes from the dough.  Use a smaller cutter to cut out shapes from the middle of the larger shapes.  Make sure you leave at least a 1cm border of biscuit dough around the edge of each cut out inner shape.

Put the cut out biscuits on to the prepared trays.  Separate the boiled sweets into colours and each colour into a separate plastic bag.  Finely crush using a rolling pin.  Sprinkle the crushed sweets into the cut out sections of each biscuit ensuring the whole shape is filled in.  If you want to hang the biscuits make a small hole in the border of each biscuit before baking with a skewer or drinking straw. 

Bake in your preheated oven for about 12-15 minutes or until the biscuits are pale golden, the sweets melted and the edges are just starting to turn golden.  Leave to cool on the trays for 5 - 10 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

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