Baking With My Toddler: Cinnamon & Ginger Xmas Biscuits

Today (Christmas Eve) I decided to be creative and bake biscuits with my little boy, both for Santa tonight, and to put in treat bags for my son and his cousin for Christmas Day!

I found a recipe for cinnamon and ginger snowmen biscuits, and decided to put my own little spin on it!

This is a great way to spend time with the kids, especially when they get to roll the dough and decorate the biscuits, and if you don’t get time to do them tonight, they are a fun thing to pass the time during the rest of the holidays!

To make approx 10 biscuits, you will need:

Biscuits:                                                                                       Icing:
225g plain flour                                                                           25g softened butter
1 tsp ground cinnamon                                                             50g icing sugar
1 tsp ground ginger                                                                    500g ready to roll white icing
150g softened butter                                                                 Chocolate chips, strawberry shoelaces, dried
2 large egg yolks                                                                          apricots and cherries to decorate
100g caster sugar
Cookie cutters

To make the biscuits:

1. Stir the flour, cinnamon and ginger together in a bowl, and add a pinch of salt.

2. In another bowl, beat the butter and caster sugar until creamy. Then beat in the egg yolks and add the flour mixture slowly into the bowl until it starts to form clumps.

3. This is the messy part! Squash the dough together with your hands, and gently knead it to make a stiff dough. Get your child to help you pat it to make a flat cake (my son screamed with delight whilst whacking it!). Then wrap it up in cling film and put it in the fridge for 15 mins.

4. While it’s chilling, preheat the over to 180C/160 Fan/ Gas 4 and line 2 baking trays with baking paper.

5. Remove the dough from the fridge, and then cut the cling film in half, so that you can roll out the dough between the two bits of cling film. Roll the dough to a 5mm thickness.

6. I got some gingerbread men, houses and Christmas tree cookie cutters (bargain at 99p I might add!) and my son helped me press them down and peeled the dough edges for me. Re-roll the offcuts to keep making more biscuits.

7. Bake the biscuits for 12 minutes, then leave them on their trays to cool for 10 minutes. Then transfer them to a wire rack until completely cool.

To make the icing:

1. Dust the surface with icing sugar, and then roll out the ready to roll white icing to the thickness of a £1 coin.

2. Use the cookie cutters again, ensuring you make enough of each shape.

3. Beat the rest of the butter and icing sugar until creamy, and then use this as the glue- spread it onto the biscuit, and then lay the biscuit down onto the icing shape, and then flip it over. Try to stop your little one from wanting to eat all this buttercream goodness at the same time!

4. Use some of the icing sugar glue to stick on the decorations. My son helped a little, but then wanted to eat everything, so I distracted him with a banana whilst I finished decorating! I used strawberry laces as scarves, chocolate drops for eyes and buttons, dried apricots for baubles and house bricks, and cherries as house windows.

This bit can take a little bit of time if you have chunky fingers and limited patience like me, but for a first-timer, I loved the results!

We are leaving one for Santa tonight with his hot chocolate, and then I have two little snowmen bags that I will fill up with the rest for my son and nephew for them to eat whilst the adults eat my home-made boozy Christmas cake!