Easter biscuits - always have a Plan B!

For ages I've been wanting to try out some of those 'stained glass' biscuits. I've seen them in loads of recipe books and magazines, and it looks perfectly simple - cut shapes in your cookies and fill with crushed boiled sweets.  Simple right?

So, for possibly the first time ever I used cookie cutters to make...cookies.  Radical huh?

We made up a huge batch of gingerbread mix, using the basic recipe:

• 350g/12oz plain flour, plus extra for dusting
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 100g/3½oz butter
• 175g/6oz soft brown sugar
• 1 free-range egg, beaten
• 4 tbsp golden syrup

Start by stirring all the dry ingredients together.

Rub in the butter until you have breadcrumb-like texture (tickley fingers for those of you that are familiar with Katie-I-Can-Cook)

Beat the egg and syrup together in another bowl, then add.

Bring together with your hands to form a dough and turn out onto floured surface.

Next we went in search of sweeties.  Ruby turned her nose up at the pear drops I proffered, so the only other thing I could find that resembled boiled sweets was these:

We spent a happy few minutes bashing the living daylights out of them with a rolling pin, and then tipped the shards into bowls - keeping the colours separate.

Then back to the dough.  This was rolled out to about 1/4 inch thick, then Ruby cut the Easter Egg shapes out with the cutter. I bought a set of lovely Easter cookie cutters from Poundland. Hooray for Poundland!

We made a small hole near the top with a drinking straw so the cookies could be hung on ribbons.

Next, I cut shapes out of the 'eggs' and laid them on a baking tray with greaseproof paper.  The holes were filled with broken sweets, then they went into the oven for 10-12 minutes in a pre-heated the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.

When golden brown, they come out of the oven and are left to set on the tray, so the sweetie windows can harden.

I was so disappointed with how they come out!  They tasted great but looked shocking!   Clearly I hadn't put anywhere near enough broken sweets inside. Either that or it simply doesn't work with lollies!

We abandoned that plan, and used the rest of the dough to make regular gingerbread cookies.

For a brief while I got to admire their natural beauty.

But Ruby AKA Sprinkles Queen had other plans, so we set about making up lots of different coloured icing...

and she sprinkled to her hearts content!

Finally, we strung them on ribbon and hung them on a branch. What a yummy tree!

I'm linking this post up to Oui Chef over at Beckicklesie - the challenge this month is "Hansel and Gretel", admittedly it would have fit better if the windows had worked - but at least I tried!