(Makes about 35)
- 250g unsalted butter
- 140g light brown muscovado sugar
- 1 medium egg yolk
- 350g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 9 boiled sweets, 3 red, 3 orange, 3 green
- Coloured writing icing
- White or silver edible glitter
1. Preheat oven to 180c/fan 160c. With an electric hand whisk, cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Whisk in the egg then stir in the flour and vanilla extract and bring together with your hands until you have a firm but not dry dough. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for at least an hour.
2. Lightly dust your work surface with flour and roll out the dough, (you might want to roll it out half at a time) to approx. ½ cm thick. Use Halloween cutters, we used a pumpkin, ghost and bat that came in a lovely set from the supermarket but you could use any spooky shapes you like to cut out biscuits. Re-roll the trimmings of your dough to get as many biscuits as you can.
3. Place on a greased baking sheet and then use small cutters or the end of a piping nozzle to cut out eyes or other shapes in your cookies. The bigger the hole you cut the more you will be able to fill them with sweets to get that stained glass effect.
4. Chill in fridge for about 30 minutes, this stops the biscuits from spreading. Whilst they chill, crush the boiled sweets (keeping the colours separate) in a pestle and mortar or with the end of a rolling pin to form small pebbles.
5. Just before baking, fill the holes in your biscuits as full as you can with different coloured sweet pebbles.
6. Bake in the oven for 12 minutes. Cool on a wire rack and then decorate using coloured writing icing and edible glitter.
