Christmas Cookie Decorations

200g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature

200g caster sugar

2 free-range eggs, lightly beaten

2 tsp vanilla extract

550g plain flour

50g glacier mints

Cutters you will need:

Snowflake shaped cutters 1 large and 1 small

Christmas tree cutters

Round cutter, 5cm across

For the Christmas tree cookies:

Green royal icing

Coloured chocolate decorations

Gold star decorations

String

For the snowflake piñata cookies:

Coloured funfetti

Red writing icing

White writing icing

For the round ‘melting snowman’ biscuits:

White marshmallows

White royal icing

Coloured chocolate decorations

Black writing icing

Sugar paste carrots/orange writing icing

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl until pale, light and fluffy.

Beat in the egg and vanilla extract, a little at a time, until well combined. Stir in the flour until the mixture comes together as a dough. Cut the dough into 3 equal pieces.

Roll out each piece of dough on a lightly floured work surface to a thickness of 1cm/½in and use the snowflakes on one piece of dough, the Christmas trees on another and the round cutters on the third and final piece of dough. Place the shapes onto a greased baking tray.

Cut smaller snowflakes from the centre of half of the snowflake shapes. With a skewer make holes big enough the thread string through in the top of the Christmas tree shapes. Bake for 5 minutes.

Whilst the biscuits are baking, place the glacier mints into a blender and blend until fine.

When the 5 minutes is up remove the biscuits from the oven and place a spoonful of the blitzed glacier mints into the centre of each snowflake biscuit that has a snowflakes shaped hole in the centre. Place back into the oven for 3 minutes to melt the glacier mints. This gives you a ‘window’ in half of the snowflake biscuits.

Once out of the oven leave to cool on a cooling rack.

For the Christmas tree cookies: place a tsp of green icing onto the centre of the Christmas tree biscuit and using a cocktail stick, move the icing so that it goes into all the corners. Using a pair of tweezers place the chocolate decorations in diagonal lines across the tree, to make ‘tinsel’. Crown with a gold star.

For the snowflake piñata cookies: take one whole snowflake and one windowed snowflake and in the windowed snowflake, place a sprinkle of funfetti. With the white writing icing, sandwich the two biscuits together and decorate the top of the cookie with the red writing icing.

For the round ‘melting snowman’ biscuits: flood the round biscuit with the white royal icing, and place a white marshmallow on top. If using sugar paste carrots, break off the pointy end and attach it to the marshmallow using the royal icing to help it stick. Add a mouth, eyes and arms using the black writing icing and finally stick the coloured chocolate decorations on, making buttons.