Scandi Christmas biscuits

Nutrition Facts

Amount Per Serving

Calories 66 Calories from Fat 27

% Daily Value*

Fat 3g5%

Saturated Fat 2g13%

Cholesterol 8mg3%

Sodium 16mg1%

Potassium 11mg0%

Carbohydrates 10g3%

Fiber 1g4%

Sugar 4g4%

Protein 1g2%

Vitamin A 85IU2%

Vitamin C 1mg1%

Calcium 4mg0%

Iron 1mg6%

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

Claire Spreadbury puts her daughters to work in the kitchen.

Cook Time1

Chilling time12

Total Time13

Course: Dessert, Party food

Cuisine: Scandinavian

Servings:

Calories: 66kcal

Author: Claire Spreadbury

The recipe says to make the biscuit dough in a stand mixer using the paddle attachment. This is all pretty straight forward. I took charge of loading up the scales while Poppy, my six-year-old, yelped ‘Stop!’ when the measurements read the right amount. She also enjoyed spooning in all the spices. So far, so easy.
When the dough comes together, it is pretty heavy, so an adult will need to retrieve it from the bowl. But then it’s over the small folk to roll it into a giant sausage and wrap it in cling film.
Then it needs to rest in the fridge overnight. Prepare them for this. If your kids are anything like mine, the main joy of baking lies in the eating, so when they discover none of that is going to happen until the next day, there might be some tantrums. You can, however, bribe them back to happiness by giving them a hunk of the cookie dough to eat raw. Works every time.

The next day, preheat your oven at 200C and line baking sheets with parchment – a boring job, but something the kids can help with too. Then set up a nice floury worktop, break off a chunk of the dough (there’s loads), let the little ones roll it out to around 2mm thick and cut out an array of Christmas-shaped biscuits.
Rosie, my nine-year-old, went first. Sometimes the rolling out got a teeny bit thin, but generally they found this pretty easy, and enjoyed taking it in turns to break off another hunk and make some more biscuits.
You can get a bit of a conveyor-belt system going as well. Because this recipe makes so many biscuits, it’s good to get each baking tray in the oven as soon as it fills up. And you can do that easily because they cook to perfection in just six minutes.
Once they’re out the oven, leave them for a few minutes before popping on to a cooling rack. Pleasingly, they also cool down really quickly, so the kids can crack on with decorating.
We did attempt to make some of these into Christmas decorations, but my puny skewer holes disappeared in the oven, so if you do want to hang them on the tree, be sure to make a sizeable circle to thread your string through.

The best icing for these biscuits is a mixture of icing sugar, stirred into beaten egg white and a few drops of freshly squeezed lemon juice, because it goes hard when it dries and pipes beautifully.
However, if like me, you’re in need of a break having got this far and just want to put your feet up and leave them to it, you can let little ones loose with colourful tubes of icing or even chocolate – sold in all good supermarkets.

These biscuits are actually wonderfully easy to make with kids, and if you can make them into decorations, even better. My girls loved it, and having decorated a grand total of eight so far, there’s another 53 in an air-tight container waiting for them – perfect for the school holidays.