Stained glass biscuits

The Christmassy feel to my cooking is certainly continuing, and I’m trying out lots of ideas that I may use over December either when I have people to visit or as edible gifts for my family and friends.

I remember seeing a version of stained glass biscuits when I was little and thinking there was something pretty magical about the way the centre really did look like glass. I don’t know why I have never tried them before now, but my present festive mood meant this was the perfect thing to bake! If you haven’t seen these before it’s just a biscuit with a hole in the centre which is filled with bits of crushed up boiled sweets – they melt in the cooking to fill the gap with a clear coloured sugar which looks a bit like stained glass. They are perfect as little decorations or as edible gifts!

I used a Lorraine Pascale recipe that I found on the BBC food site, from the programme Lorraine’s  Last Minute Christmas, and varied it only by using dark muscovado sugar instead of light brown sugar and by missing out the ground cloves (I didn’t have any in the kitchen!).

Apart from one shattered centre (impatient me trying to take them off the tray too soon!), I think these were pretty successful, and they certainly looked like I hoped they would. However, the recipe did warn that the dough can be quite dry and crumbly and I found this to be a bit of an understatement! It was quite a pain to work with, even when warm which slightly detracted from the fun of the baking session. I did love the spicy flavour of the ginger and cinnamon though.

I will definitely be making more stained glass biscuits this year, but I may experiment with using a different biscuit mix so that they are a bit friendlier to make!