GINGERBREAD CHRISTMAS TREE DECORATIONS RECIPES

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan160°C/gas 4. Put about 18 foil paper cases into 2 muffin or fairy cake tins. Put the butter into a bowl. Add the sugar and orange zest, and beat well using a wooden spoon until pale and fluffy. You can use an electric whisk instead of a wooden spoon. This is called creaming.
• Crack the eggs into a bowl and whisk well. Gradually add them to the creamed mixture, beating well after each addition. Sift the flour over the mixture and carefully fold in with a metal spoon. The mixture should be soft enough to drop easily from the spoon – this is called dropping consistency. If it isn’t, stir in the milk to soften it slightly.
• Fill the paper cases three-quarters full with the mixture. Bake for 15-18 minutes, until golden. Ask an adult to remove the tins from the oven and transfer the cakes to a wire rack. Put the icing sugar into a bowl, add a little hot water to mix to a thick pouring consistency. Spoon the icing onto the cakes and decorate with silver balls, candles and fondant icing. Leave to set. Store in an airtight container.

Steps:

• Heat the golden syrup, sugar and butter into a medium saucepan over a medium heat. Stir until the mixture is heated and the sugar completely dissolved. Remove from the heat and add the cream and spices.
• Add the flour and bicarbonate of soda, stirring as you add it until you have a loose mixture. Place a sheet of parchment paper on a baking tray and tip the mixture on top. Cover with another piece of parchment and flatten the dough slightly. Leave to cool in the fridge for 2–3 hours. After this you should have a thick dough.
• Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4.
• Remove the dough from the fridge and roll between the sheets of paper with a rolling pin until 1cm/½in thick.
• Dust a work surface with flour and roll the dough out with a floured rolling pin until 5mm/¼in thick (as you want the biscuits to only rise slightly when cooking and be nice and crisp when cooked).
• Using a floured cutter of your choice, cut out the biscuits and place onto the lined baking tray. You may need to cook these in batches or use two trays if they don’t all fit on one. Any scraps of dough can be pressed together, rerolled and cut out .
• Bake the biscuits for 8–10 minutes, or until they are rich brown at the sides and slightly paler in the centre.
• If you intend to hang the biscuits up (say from a Christmas tree), pierce a small hole in the top of the biscuit immediately after they come out of the oven and place on a wire rack to cool.
• Once cool, you can thread ribbon or string through the hole at the top of the biscuit to hang from the tree. Store in an airtight container so that the biscuits remain crisp.