Christmas Biscuits

One of our Christmas traditions is baking Christmas biscuits together.

 

A couple of days ago I had this as the activity in David and Ally's advent activity calendar.

 

Because Ally can't handle anything with raw egg in it I made up a batch of these easy biscuits from Allergy Adventures blog. We adapted them slightly by leaving out the lemon and adding a teaspoon of mixed spice instead.

 

 

 

 

Because there was no egg in them Ally was able to do all the rolling and cutting by himself, and what a great job he did of them too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although he is the only boy with no allergies, David still made a free from biscuit so that everyone could eat them. He used my usual Christmas Biscuit recipe, which you can find here. The boys with egg allergies, as I've mentioned before, are fine to eat egg in biscuits and cakes. They just can't handle raw egg or eat egg on its own. We made these without the stained glass middle bits but we are planning on making a batch of the stained glass ones for the tree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David took his job very seriously and can't wait to make another batch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two batches of biscuits were made on Monday.

 

It's now Wednesday and there is nothing in that tin but crumbs!

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Christmas Recipes - Stained Glass Biscuits/Christmas Biscuits

 

I first posted this recipe two years ago but there is no harm in repeating it again as it is, I think, a lovely wee tradition. We also use this recipe, minus the stained glass part, to make up simple Christmas biscuits. We don't bother with any fancy decorating on them, just a sprinkling of icing sugar, as you will see from the photo at the bottom of the post.

 

The recipe I use is adapted from a Nigella Christmas biscuit recipe.

 

To make wheat & dairy free Christmas biscuits you will need:

10oz Doves Farm Wheat Free Self Raising Flour

2tsp mixed spice

1tsp ground cinnamon

3 oz dairy free margarine

3 oz light brown sugar

2tbsp runny honey

1-2 beaten eggs

~Put the flour and spice in a food processor and blitz until mixed.

~Add the butter, then blitz, then add the sugar and blitz again.

~Now add the honey, blitz it in, and slowly add the eggs.. You probably won't need all of the eggs, but you might, so go slowly here, stopping the blitzing when everything comes together as a dough.

~Now roll out your biscuit dough on a floured surface and cut out your shapes then place on greased baking trays.

~Once on the trays cut out a shape in the centre and place a boiled sweet in this centre.

~If your sweet is too big for the hole in the biscuit, just crush it up a little with a pestle and mortar and fill the hole with chunks of sweetie instead.

~You will also need to make little holes at the top of each shape you plan to hang on the tree. Use a skewer or cocktail stick for this.

~Bake at 180C for around 15-20 minutes, after which your biscuits will be golden and the sweets will have melted and filled up the middle.

~Leave to cool on the trays as the stained glass centre will be hot, hot, hot!

~Once cooled you can thread them and hang them up. If you find that the hole has closed up a little in cooking, thread a needle and sew the string through it. Works perfectly!

They look so pretty hanging on the tree with the fairy lights shining behind them.

 

 

And the non-stained glass version.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Recipe of the Week - Christmas Biscuits

Although these are Christmas biscuits, we make them throughout the year with different shaped cutters.

My mum got me this set of cutters last year for my birthday. They are sooo fab.

There are 12 different shaped cutters and each cutter has two bits to it. 

These are the Christmassy shaped ones.

The red bit cuts out the basic shape of the biscuit, then you pop off the clear bit and use it to add some detail, like this little teddy below.

Here he is after the basic shape was cut out.

And here he is with the details added.

Moving onto the recipe.

 10oz Doves Farm SR Wheat-Free Flour

4oz dairy-free margarine

4oz brown sugar

1tsp baking powder

2tsp mixed spice

2 eggs, beaten

~Put the flour and margarine into a food processor and blitz until the butter is all blended into the flour and it looks like breadcrumbs.

~Add the sugar, baking powder and spice and blitz again until mixed in.

~While the motor is on, slowy add the eggs until the mixture comes together in a ball. You may not need all of the egg mixture but with wheat-free flour I find that you do. You don't want your mixture to be too crumbly and with wheat-free flour you are best to have it on the sticky side, although not too sticky to roll out!

~Use some more wheat-free four to dust your work surface and roll out the dough until it is about 1 - 2cm thick, depending on how chunky you want your biscuits.

~Cut out the shapes, re-rolling the scraps until the dough is all used up, place on greased baking trays and bake at 180C for 15-20minutes until golden brown.

~Transfer to cooling racks once they are cool enough to touch and then shake over some icing sugar.

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Recipe of the Week - Custard Creams

It's back to a sweet recipe again this week. I know most of my recipes so far have been sweet ones, but it's sweet things that are much harder to find when you are on a special diet and so they are much more appreciated.

These little biscuits are not like the Custard Cream biscuits you buy in the shops. The name comes from the fact that there is custard powder in the mix and butter-cream sandwiching them together. This is one of the many cakes/biscuits my mum used to make when we were growing up. I have adapted it to make it suitable for the boys' allergies. If you are wanting to make these with wheat-flour then the quantities are slightly different, so I have added these at the bottom.

Although there are three different stages to making these, don't let that put you off, as they are not time-consuming stages!

Firstly you will need:

8oz dairy-free margarine

3oz icing sugar

6oz Dove's Farm Wheat-Free Self Raising Flour

3tbsp Custard Powder*

-Beat the margarine and icing sugar well together with a mixer.

-Add the flour and custard powder and continue to mix until it is smooth, like a very soft dough consistency.

-Flour you hands well and make little balls of dough, placing them on a greased baking tray.

-Press down each ball gently with a fork. You don't want them to be too flat because they don't really rise when cooking. Don't squash them down on the tray too much either, or they will stick there after cooking.

-Bake in the oven at 170C for around 20 minutes, until they are lightly golden.

-Let the biscuits cool on the tray for about 10 minutes before gently lifting them onto a cooling rack.

Now you need:

 3oz dairy free chocolate

-Melt the chocolate.

-Once the biscuits are cool enough, usually only about 10 minutes after transferring them to the rack, dip the end of each biscuit into the chocolate.

-Place the biscuits onto a sheet of foil for the chocolate to set.

For the final stage I recommend Betty Crocker's Ready-Made Butter-Cream! 

The recipe for this butter-cream has recently changed and is now dairy-free. It's great to have on standby for things like this. You won't obviously need a whole tub for this, probably only a quarter. Keep the rest in the fridge for when you make a Victoria Sponge.

Back to the biscuits,

-Sandwich two biscuits together with about a teaspoon of butter-icing.

(If you would rather make your own icing then use about 2oz margarine and 6oz icing sugar.)

Footnotes:

*Make sure you use Custard Powder and not Instant Custard, which will have milk in it. I'm not sure if all brands of Custard Powder will be wheat & dairy free either, but I know that at the moment I am using Bird's Custard Powder which is suitable.

If you want to make this with wheat flour then use only:

6oz margarine

2oz icing sugar

6oz plain flour

2tbsp custard powder.

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