Magical Sparkling Snowflakes: Christmas Butter Biscuits-Cookies

"These sparkling Scandinavian style Christmas biscuits-cookies look just magical, especially when hung with ribbon from the Christmas tree! You need special snowflake biscuit-cookie cutters, and also edible glitter or sparkling silver or white dusting powder. If you cannot source edible sparkle or glitter dusting powder, they still look beautiful if decorated with white royal icing, piped into trellace work patterns to enhance the snowflake shape. These magical snowflakes make ideal Christmas gifts, and can be packaged in cellophane bags with a pretty and seasonal ribbon attached. They last for up to 14 days in an airtight tin & stored in a cool place, assuming they last that long!"
 
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photo by Izy Hossack photo by Izy Hossack
photo by Izy Hossack
photo by Izy Hossack photo by Izy Hossack
photo by Izy Hossack photo by Izy Hossack
photo by Artandkitchen photo by Artandkitchen
photo by Dreamer in Ontario photo by Dreamer in Ontario
Ready In:
45mins
Ingredients:
8
Yields:
30 Snowflake Cookies
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ingredients

  • 2 cups plain flour
  • 1 cup icing sugar
  • 150 g butter, cubed, chilled
  • 1 large egg, at room temperature
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • milk, to mix
  • 4 ounces white royal icing, for piping designs or 4 ounces glace icing, for icing the biscuits
  • edible glitter or edible sparkling cake dusting powder
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directions

  • Place flour and the icing sugar in a food processor. Process for 30 seconds. Add butter. Process until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add egg and vanilla. Process until dough comes together. If it is too dry, add some milk.
  • Transfer to a lightly floured surface. Knead dough until smooth. Press or roll into a 9"/20cm circle. Wrap in greaseproof paper. Refrigerate for 1 hour or until firm.
  • Preheat oven to 180C/360F, and line 2 flat baking/cookie trays with baking paper. Roll out dough between 2 sheets of baking paper until about 1/4"/5mm thick.
  • Using snowflake biscuit/cookie cutters, cut shapes out of dough. Place on them gently on to the trays. Press leftover dough together and repeat cutting out shapes. Refrigerate for 30 minutes or until firm.
  • Bake the cookies/biscuits for 10 minutes, swapping trays after 5 minutes, or until light golden in colour. Allow to cool on trays completely.
  • Pipe trellis-work patterns following the snowflake shapes, or drizzle glace icing over the top; then dust them with edible glitter/edible silver dusting powder whilst the icing is still wet.
  • Dust with remaining sugar or edible glitter/silver dust just before serving.
  • Note for making holes for hanging on the Christmas Tree: Just before baking, take a plastic drinking straw and press into the top of the snowflake shapes - to make a small hole - then gently wiggle the straw around a bit to widen the hole, and bake as before. On taking them out of the oven, if the holes have closed up a bit, gently wiggle around again with a plastic drinking straw, to make the holes bigger! Excuse the language, I don't know how else to put it! LOL!

Questions & Replies

  1. Exactly how much butter , using either tablespoon or cup amount. Don't understand by what is stated in recipe
     
  2. Exactly how much butter in this recipe, don't und
     
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Reviews

  1. Well FT, you have done it for me again. This is yet another recipe that is easy-to-fix, yummy good & sent me right to my kitchen for a dy of fun & creativity. I made the cookies for my MILs sweet tooth & the Dec Photo Challenge. I have never used icing sugar in a cookie recipe b4, but it works so well! Not sure why, but my dough was very dry & I added 2 tbsp butter + 1 tbsp water to get it to a good roll-out consistency. All went smoothly after that. I lacked the spec cookie cutters you used & had no food colouring or cookie decorations. So I used cranberry juice concentrate for colour & brushed the surface of some cookies b4 dusting w/granulated sugar to get a sparkle effect. The cookies are yummy w/o it, but it surprised me how much flavor the cranberry concentrate gave to the cookies & I bet this could be done w/other fruit concentrates. Thx for sharing this great recipe w/us.
     
  2. This must be the perfect Christmas cookie. It's pretty, deliciously buttery and very easy to make.
     
  3. Easy and wonderful! I do not have the special snowflake biscuit-cookie cutter. For this reason two different sized star cutter were my patterns. For some cookies I pressed a snow pattern with the back of the knife.<br/>Really fantastic and decorative. Thanks a lot!
     
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RECIPE SUBMITTED BY

<p><strong><span>The sunflowers in the field behind my house in SW France:</span></strong></p> <p><img title=Sunflowers src=http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r271/copperhorse58/DSCN8221.jpg alt=Sunflowers width=640 height=480 /><br /><strong><span><br /><br />I am British (English-Scottish), but I was born in South Africa and have lived all over the world, including Hong Kong, Germany, Cyprus, USA &amp; Singapore. I have also been very fortunate to have travelled extensively over the years.........I still have wanderlust! <br /><br />I used to be an English Literature &amp; Art History teacher &amp; lecturer; before that, I trained and worked as a Graphic Designer for many years. I now live in France with my husband &amp; my daughter who has just started university in September 2006. We also have one very chatty Burmese cat Willow, who allows us to live with her here! (I used to have three cats, I recently lost Monty, a beautiful seal point Siamese and before that, Rama, who was a debonair blue point Siamese cat - I would love to have another Siamese cat or cats in the future!)</span></strong></p> <p><em><strong><span>This is my Burmese Cat, Willow, sunning herself on the log pile in the kitchen garden:</span></strong></em></p> <p><strong><img title=My src=http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r271/copperhorse58/ABaconButtyandSundryFoodPhotos34.jpg alt=My width=640 height=480 /></strong></p> <p><strong><span>Here is my lovely Monty, a seal point Siamese, and Willow, sitting&nbsp;in the kitchen garden last year, and a few months before Monty died; he was 18yrs old:</span></strong></p> <p><img title=Monty src=http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r271/copperhorse58/AbsolutelySinfulStickyToffeePudding.jpg alt=Monty width=640 height=480 />My</p> <p><strong><span>This is my wonderful old boy, Rama, a blue-point Siamese, who died when he was 20yrs old - excuse the old and much sellotaped photo:</span></strong></p> <p><img title=Rama src=http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r271/copperhorse58/Rama1stOctober2004164.jpg alt=Rama width=517 height=639 /></p> <p><strong><span>My favourite pastimes are: reading, writing, painting &amp; drawing, photography, gardening, anything creative, walking, travelling, dining out and of course COOKING! I love all types of cuisine, but especially Traditional British - and NO it is NOT all bad!! I particularly love food associated with the changing seasons plus traditional feasts &amp; festivals, as well as Slow Cooking. I also enjoy French &amp; North African cuisine, come to think of it, there isn't much I don't like! <br /><br />My husband &amp; I run a Chambres D'Hotes, (Bed and Breakfast) called Auberge de la Fontaine here in beautiful South West France; we specialise in Gourmet Food &amp; Wine Breaks, French Antiques &amp; Restoration courses, French Language courses and French Cookery classes. Our home is completely furnished with Antique French furniture that we have rescued &amp; restored ourselves. Our charming village has one of the oldest Churches in the region &amp; it is famous for its connection with the St.Jacques de Compostella Pilgrimage route, as well as being within the Cognac &amp; Bordeaux wine growing area. <br /><br />We have a wonderful garden where we grow ALL of our own herbs and most of our fruit and vegetables. I specialise in rare, unusual and old-fashioned herbs, which I grow in our walled garden. As well as growing herbs, I also grow many different varieties of lavender, old-fashioned shrub roses and heirloom fruit and vegetables. <br /><br />We have lived overseas for many, many years now - but we both still love going home to Northern England, near Scarborough &amp; York, to visit our family &amp; friends. We also love indulging in dining out when we are there, in a wide variety of EXCELLENT Gastro-Pubs that we have in North Yorkshire; and popping in to have a Pint of REAL ENGLISH ALE in our local pub is a always a must!! <br /></span></strong></p> <p><br /><a href=http://photobucket.com/images/merci%20beaucoup target=_blank><img src=http://i420.photobucket.com/albums/pp287/vi-vie15/Merci/hb09izl7.gif border=0 alt=merci /></a> <br /><br /><strong><span>A Message to all who make and review my recipes! I try very hard to reply to EACH and EVERYONE of you who kindly makes, reviews and photographs my recipes! However, sometimes I am so busy in the B and B, and with other things, that I may be late in sending a personal thank you message, and sometimes I forget completely! I would just like to thank you ALL in advance, and just in case I am late or forgetful in sending a personal thanks. I am always very humbled by anyone who chooses to make one of my recipes, and I love reading the reviews and seeing the beautiful photos that are posted. Merci beaucoup encore! <br /><br />A note about my recipes. All of my posted recipes, whether they be my own concoctions or adaptations from a book or a famous chef, have been tried and tested at least once, by ME! I try to make sure that I am the guinea pig and not you! However, if there is anything you would like ask me about one of my recipes, or a query that I may be able to help you with, please do write and I will try to answer your question as soon as possible. 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