Cliodhna's Jeweled Christmas Tree Cookies
From the kitchen of Cliodhna Timoney
Ingredients
175g/6 ounces plain (all-purpose) flour
75g/3 ounces butter, cut into small pieces
40g/1 1/2 ounces castor (superfine) sugar
1 egg white
30 ml/2 tablespoon orange juice
225g/8 ounce colored fruit sweets (candies)
12 colored ribbons to decorate
Directions
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius/ 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Line two baking sheets with non stick baking parchment.
Sift the flour into a mixing bowl. Rub the butter into the flour until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.
Stir in the sugar, egg white, and enough orange juice to form a soft dough.
Knead on a lightly floured surface until smooth.
Roll out the dough until about 5 mm or a quarter of an inch thick and stamp out as many shapes as possible using a floured Christmas tree cutter.
Transfer the shapes to the baking sheets, spacing them well apart because they spread during cooking. Gather up the trimmings and lightly knead them together until smooth.
Using a 1cm/ half an inch round cutter (or the end of a large plain piping nozzle) stamp out and remove six rounds form each tree shape. Cut each sweet into three pieces and place a piece in each hole. Make a small hole at the top of each tree to thread the ribbon through after the cookies have been cooked.
Bake for 15-20 minutes until the biscuits are slightly gold in color and the sweets have melted and filled the holes. Cool on the baking sheets.
Make more biscuits in the same way until you have used up the remaining dough and sweets.
Thread short lengths of ribbon through the holes so that the biscuits can be hung on the Christmas Tree!!
