A staple Christmas biscuit recipe, especially if you have young children to entertain. Add decorations of choice and bag up to make a thoughtful home-made gift.
This is one of our go-to Christmas biscuits - a gently spiced cookie that can be decorated with icing or left plain.
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Yields:
35
Prep Time:
20 mins
Cook Time:
15 mins
Total Time:
35 mins
Cal/Serv:
60
Ingredients
For the biscuits
2 level tbsp clear honey
25g
(1oz) unsalted butter
50g
(2oz) light muscovado sugar
Grated zest of ½ orange and ½ lemon
225g
(8oz) self-raising flour
1 level tsp each ground cinnamon and ground ginger
½ level tsp grated nutmeg
Pinch of ground cloves
1 level tbsp finely chopped candied peel
50g
(2oz) ground almonds
1
large egg, lightly beaten
1½ tbsp milk
To decorate
150g
(5oz) white icing sugar
Silver sugar balls
Directions
Step 1
Put the honey in a small pan with the butter, sugar and the orange and lemon zests. Put over a low heat and stir until the butter has melted and the ingredients are thoroughly combined, then remove from the heat and allow to cool.
Step 2
Sieve flour, spices and a pinch of salt together into a bowl, then add the chopped candied peel and the ground almonds. Add the butter and sugar mixture, the beaten egg and the milk and mix until the dough comes together.
Step 3
Knead the dough briefly until smooth, then wrap it in clingfilm and chill for at least 4hr or overnight.
Step 4
Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan oven) mark 4. On a lightly floured work surface roll out dough to a thickness of 5mm (1⁄4in) and stamp out stars using a 5cm (2in) cutter.
Step 5
Put the biscuits on baking sheets and bake for about 15-20min or until they're just beginning to brown at the edges. Remove the biscuits from the oven and cool on a wire rack. Store in an airtight container for up to a week. Alternatively, wrap them in clingfilm and freeze for up to three months.
Step 6
To decorate, put the icing sugar in a bowl and add 11⁄2tbsp cold water. Pipe icing over some of the biscuits and dot a line of silver balls down the middle. Drizzle lines over a couple more and, for the others, simply dot each corner with icing and add a silver ball. Allow the icing to set, then store in an airtight container and eat within a week.
If gift wrapping...
To gift-wrap, pack the decorated biscuits in pretty boxes lined with greaseproof paper and attach a label with an eat-by date.
An experienced and highly skilled team of food writers, stylists and digital content producers, the Good Housekeeping Cookery Team is a close-knit squad of food obsessives. Cookery Editor Emma Franklin is our resident chilli obsessive and barbecue expert, who spends an inordinate amount of time on holidays poking round the local supermarkets seeking out new and exciting foods. Senior Cookery Writer Alice Shields is a former pastry chef and baking fanatic who loves making bread and would have peanut butter with everything if she could. Her favourite carb is pasta, and our vibrant green spaghetti is her weeknight go-to. Lover of all things savoury, Senior Cookery Writer Grace Evans can be found eating crispy corn and nocellara olives at every opportunity, and will take the cheeseboard over dessert any time (though she cannot resist a slice of tres leches cake). With a wealth of professional kitchen know-how, culinary training and years of experience between them, they are all dedicated to ensuring every Good Housekeeping recipe is the best it can be, so you can trust they’ll work (and if they don’t – we’ll have the answer for why*) every time (*90% of the time the answer is: “buy an separate oven thermometer”!).
