Decorated Christmas tree biscuit recipe

The kids are going to love decorating this festive Christmas tree shaped biscuit made by our mummy blogger Anneliese. With a hint of ginger, the dough is really easy to make and perfect for teaching kids all about measuring and combining different ingredients together. They can get creative too, decorating the Christmas tree biscuit once fully cooled. Choose your child's favourite sweets like Maltesers, Jelly Tots or Smarties. Our mummy blogger, Anneliese made this decorated Christmas tree biscuit as part of her goodtoknow blog Mummy's Little Helpers.

Ingredients

• 350g plain flour
• 1tsp bicarbonate soda
• 1½tsp / 2tsp ground ginger
• 100g unsalted butter, softened
• 170g soft brown sugar
• 1 large egg, beaten
• 2tbsp milk
• 4tbsp golden syrup

To decorate:

• Writing icing (or homemade icing)
• Jellied sweets
• Chocolates

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C/325°F/Gas Mark 4. Ask your child to grease the baking trays by smearing butter all over them, or you could use sheets of greaseproof paper if preferred.
2. I have to admit that I don't always bother sifting flour, but I always sift any raising agent or spice as they tend to stay in clumps. In this case you could simply weigh the flour into a large mixing bowl, and then your child could easily sift in the bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger.
3. Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ginger together then rub in the butter. Hopefully you remembered to take the butter out of the fridge in advance so that it is nice and soft. Soft butter is so much easier for little hands to rub in. Now weigh the sugar into the mixing bowl and stir to combine.
4. In a jug or bowl crack in the egg and ask your child to whisk it with a fork. This job usually goes down well with small children! Carefully measure the golden syrup in with the egg and then add in the milk. Give it a quick mix before pouring into the gingery mixture.
5. Get stuck in with your hands and bring the dough together. It is a fairly sticky dough so be prepared for lots of “I've got mucky hands, yuck”. Please avoid adding in more flour, simply dust some over your hands instead, pick up the dough and place onto a well floured worktop. You will be amazed at how easy this dough is to work with and your child will no doubt enjoy rolling it out.
6. I knew I would have to cut out the tree so I halved the dough and my little boy happily cut out shapes with his Christmas cutters (and also indulged in some raw dough) I used a cocktail stick to 'scratch' out a very rough tree shape before cutting to size with a sharp knife and put it into the oven to cook for about 15 minutes. The smell from the oven is glorious. I felt tempted to eat the tree as soon as I took it out! The biscuit remains soft for a couple of minutes, so leave it to cool on the tray for about 5 minutes before attempting the transfer. I used two long knives to move my tree onto the wire rack. I think my heart stopped beating while I carefully moved it off the tray!
7. While the tree cooled I helped my boy to cut out more shapes for the tree. I found that a piping nozzle made the perfect size for a round biscuit bauble. We had a great time and the dough was a real pleasure to work with!
8. When you have a tray full of festive shapes place into the oven. Do bear in mind that your biscuits will be various sizes so keep checking on them. The smaller ones will of course cook a little quicker! On average it should take your biscuits between 8 and 15 minutes to cook.
9. Once the tree and decorations are cooked and cooled you can break out the sweets and icing. My husband and boy got busy and really went to town on decorating their Christmas tree with iced biscuit baubles and numerous sweeties. I really enjoyed watching them have fun and the end result went down a real treat!