School Holidays are fast approaching, here’s an idea of something to keep kids entertained and stomach filled! Iced Christmas Biscuits are easy and fun for the whole family to do together! Furthermore, Xmas Cookies are perfect to make on the run-up to Christmas, for the kids to pass on as a gift to relatives.
How to make cut out Biscuits?
These are basic ingredients to make cut out biscuits.
We used a handheld mixer for beating the sugar and butter together (we still haven’t treated ourselves to a proper cake mixer yet!) make sure you mix the butter & sugar together for about 2 minutes so it is well-mixed light and fluffy.
Add in your Egg and Vanilla Extract continue to whisk for 2 minutes until combined.
Next, add Baking Powder and add half the flour, stir (with a spoon) to prevent a flour shower! then add remaining half.
This will create a nice thick playdoh texture dough, it should be easy to roll without cracking or sticking.
If it is too moist add more flour.
If it is cracking(dry) add a small bit of water.
I suggest to roll biscuits out onto Parchment Paper this prevents it from sticking to the table and is easier to transfer to a baking tray!
We picked up these cute cutters from Tesco they are by Joie. I can’t link to them as Tesco don’t sell them online?
This is what the biscuits look like when cooked. Do not overcook them! they will still be pale and soft, don’t worry when they cool they will firm up.
We also made Gingerbread men shaped biscuits, why not treat yourself to some new Christmas biscuit cutters? Good one for the Christmas Elves to bring along with them one morning!
The smell of freshly baked Christmas biscuits got too much for our Bruno at this point, he even got off the sofa to investigate! Leave the biscuits to cool (away from children prying hands and dogs watering mouths, whilst you make up some Royal Icing
How to make Biscuit Icing?
Royal icing is perfect for topping these Iced Christmas Biscuits. It goes on runny but dries hard. We always add cream of tartar to our recipe this helps stabilise the egg white, stops the icing powder from separating from the egg white and gives a firm consistency making it easier to pipe.
Two Chicks Egg White product (available at most supermarkets in fresh food aisle) is perfect for making royal icing. Not only less fiddly separating the yolk from white but also no worry of Salmonella from the raw egg as it is pasteurised.
Once all mixed to a firm consistency. We separated into 4 bowls and added different food gel colouring to them. We chose to leave one White then added Black, Red and Green colouring to the other 3 bowls.
Ready for piping the royal icing on the biscuits! We used plastic disposable piping bags to pipe on the biscuits cut a small hole in the end and your away.
We made 4 bags of thick icing for the edges and the remaining 4 bowls of icing we added a little extra water which is perfect for filling in larger areas, like the dress seen in the below gingerbread lady! Use a toothpick to help spread the icing on Xmas cookies.
Remember to keep the icing covered or it will firm up before you use it! (You can always add some water to make runny again if this happens!!)
We all had fun decorating these Iced Christmas Biscuits in our own ways!
Once all was done it was quite late so we made up some Masala Tea and munched down on Xmas Cookies before calling it a night!
Iced Christmas Biscuits
Ingredients
Christmas Biscuit
- 200 g butter take out of the fridge at least 1 hr before use
- 200 g granulated sugar
- 1 Egg
- 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 2 tsp Baking Powder
- 400 g flour you may need little more to get to playdough consistency
Royal Icing
- 350 g Icing sugar
- 2 egg whites
- ½ tsp cream of tartar
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- sprinkles/sparkles/ balls/ little fudge bits for decorating
Instructions
Christmas Biscuits
- Preheat oven to 175°C
- Place room temperature butter and sugar in a bowl and use electric whisk for 2 minutes until light and fluffy.
- Add egg and vanilla extract, mix in.
- Add the baking powder & ½ the flour, use a spoon to mix in.
- Add the remaining ½ of the flour, it will get stiffer to stir. Check consistency, it should be like playdoh. Add more flour until its right, if it gets too stiff add a bit of water.
- Tip! Separate mix into 3 balls. Each ball will be enough to fill one baking tray of biscuits. Put each tray in the oven whilst you cut out the next ones, conveyer belt biscuits!!
- Place a sheet of parchment paper down roll the biscuit dough out on it and use cutters to cut into desired shapes. Reroll what is left and continue until no dough left.
- Lift parchment paper on to the baking tray and bake for about 7 minutes. Keep an eye on them remove from oven before they change colour! They will still be soft when you remove them, once they cool they firm up!
Royal Icing
- Mix sugar, cream of tartar, vanilla extract and egg whites together in a bowl
- Use a whisk on low setting until icing is smooth. You want it to be a thick consistency to pipe without running off the biscuit, add more icing if needed?
- Put icing into separate bowls for each colour and we used 4 colours. Plain white, red, green and black.
- Use gel food colouring to colour each bowl of icing then transfer some of each into a disposable icing bag. Chop a tiny bit of the end to pipe out of.
- Any remaining icing in bowls we added a bit of water, to make it runnier to fill inside the piping.
Nutrition
Lovely cookies! I’ve been meaning to give cut out cookies with royal icing another go. Great post 😀 (And cute pup!)
Thank you, we want to have another go too! Need more practice with the icing, to get the perfect pipe/flood consistency.
Those biscuits looks so cute!! I always think this is what my iced cookies are gonna look like but I guess my patience is not all there 😉
Hi Emmeline
Thanks for your comment
You do have to have a lot of patience making these especially with four children but it was great fun LOL!!
These look gorgeous! I’d love to try my hand at making these.
Thank you for sharing.
Hi Nyxie
Thanks for your comment
If you make them , I hope you enjoy them as much as we did.
Enjoy!!
planning to ice cookies today. Just printed out your great instructions. Love your pupper!
Hi Gillian
Hope you enjoy making the cookies as much as we all did.
Bruno is a big softy and always by my side lol
Enjoy!!
What a lovely simple recipe for the holidays! I love sugar cookies with a royal icing. I can’t wait to try your recipe!
Thank you, we need a bit more practice with the piping side!