Blogmas Day 5 - Christmas Cookies

Hello my lovelies and welcome to the 5th of December, less than three weeks till Christmas eek. Now I have a non-beauty related blog post for you all today. I have never done a baking blog post so it's a bit out of my comfort zone. Along with make-up/beauty another one of my main hobbies is baking. Recently I can't seem to stop baking but I never mention it on my blog. This bake isn't the best bake I have ever done or anything but I realised that although I'm doing blogmas, none of my posts have been Christmasy. If you're not interested in baking then I'm sorry but this is just a one off and I have a beauty post planned for tomorrow. I've called these biscuits Christmas Cookies as if you were going to put the smell of Christmas into a cookie - these would be it. To me they smell like Christmas cake and Christmas pudding both of which I love the smell of but hate the fast but thats only because I don't like dried fruit. These biscuits are dead easy and quick and you don't need to be amazing at baking to make them. I also think they would make great tree decorations that all the family could join in on. You could make a whole near the top with a skewer and tie some ribbon through them. I would have done this but our tree isn't up yet.

Ingredients:
6 oz plain flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
3 and 1/4 oz of butter
3 oz soft brown sugar
finely grated rind of 1 orange
1/2 of a beaten egg

Icing:
7 oz icing sugar
5 tsp cold water
edible silver balls

Method:

1) Pre-heat the oven to 180°C/ 160°C/ 350°F

2) Line several large baking sheets with baking paper

3) Sift the flour and spices into a bowl

4) Add the butter and massage with your fingers to make breadcrumbs

5) Stir in the sugar and the grated orange rind

6) Add the egg mixture and stir/mould with your hands to work the mixture into a dough

7) Roll the mixture on a work surface to about 5mm thick. You may need extra flour to wipe the surface and rolling pin if your mixture is too wet

8) Use a cutter to cut out the biscuits. I've used a star but you could you a range of different Christmas shaped cutters such as a bell or snowflake

9) Bake in the oven for 10 - 15 minutes until golden brown. Once the biscuits have been out of the oven for around 2 minutes, transfer them to a wire rack to cool

10) Once the biscuits have cooled you can ice them. For the icing sift the icing sugar into a bowl and add the water. You may need to alter the amount of water you put in. You want the icing runny enough to be able to spread but not too runny that it just drips off the biscuits.

11) You can then decorate with a range of decorations how ever you want to. I went for a simple design as I'm really not artistic.

I hope you enjoyed this different style of blog post. Let me know in the comments if you try this or if you would like more Christmassy/baking blog posts.

Also, let me know in the comments what you're doing for Christmas and your preparations, this is my favourite time of year and I love to hear what everyone is doing for Christmas, it's all so exciting.