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My two eldest boys challenged me to start a cooking blog with simple recipes that we can cook together - and my youngest one has now joined in. I am hoping they pick up some cooking and photograph skills... or that at least they learn to design and run a blog.


CHRISTMAS TREE BISCUITS

We make these every year to decorate the Christmas tree. If you are in a 'being a good person' phase, just follow the recipe and use nicely flavoured sweets to make the transparent glass. The risk is that  your children will eat the biscuits as soon as you look the other side, just as my 3 years old niece did last week (the results of which you can see in my instagram account miriamgonzalezdurantez) If you are in a 'fed up of being a good person' phase, then add four generous teaspoons of ground black pepper to the mixture and use strong mint flavoured sweets - you can be sure the children will not mess around with your tree.

You need:
- 1 egg
- 100 gr sugar
- 100 gr butter at room temperature
- 275 plain flower
- half a teaspoon of powdered cinnamon
-  half a teaspoon of vanilla essence
For the decoration
- and egg white
- 225 gr icing sugar
- 6 boiled sugar sweets (any colour you like)

Preheat the oven at 190 degrees.
Beat the sugar and butter in a food processor. Add the egg, then the cinnamon and vanilla and finally the flour. Wrap it all with cling film and let it rest for 30-45 minutes in the fridge. Then roll it out to the thickness of a pound  (or a euro - almost the same thickness and on the way to being the same value!) and cut the biscuits in whatever shape you wish.

Put the biscuits on a tray lined with being paper. Remember to make a hole at the top of each biscuit. And if you want to get a transparent effect then cut a shape inside each biscuit and put a sweet (or half a sweet) inside each shape. Bake the biscuits for 15 minutes ( we got 24 biscuits, but it depends on how big your cutter is)

Let the biscuits cool down completely. Then prepare the icing by just whisking the egg white and icing sugar for 5 minutes. You need a pipping bag with a very small nozzle to decorate it with whatever shapes you wish. Though they also look good if you just cover the biscuits in icing with a teaspoon.