Peppermint Star Biscuits.... or Shrek Biscuits!!

This week I agreed to look after my friend's children for the day as they were both at work. This meant that I found myself at home with four little girls under five, desperately wondering how I was going to keep them all entertained all day. I am not an Arts & Crafts kind of person, but I do like to think of myself as handy in the kitchen, and so I decided that it would be a good idea to make Peppermint Creams with them - a relatively easy fail safe recipe I thought.....

Unfortunately, the best laid plans do not always go as desired and rather than making Peppermint Creams, the excited girls were a little overzealous with their food colouring and peppermint flavouring, So rather than four bowls of green peppermint sugar dough, turning my head for a split second meant that we found ourselves with four bowls of green gloop, all of the icing sugar gone, and the essence and food colouring all over the floor, table and apron of the two year old who had knocked them over! However, the girls were desperate for something positive to come of their hard work and so in an attempt to salvage their efforts, I decided to bake some biscuits so that they could decorate them with their green gloopy icing.

This I did, and although they had to wait a while, the girls had great fun decorating their biscuits with Peppermint Icing and some Christmas decorations left over from our Cupcake Session. So all's well that ends well. The biscuits actually tasted really lovely and the peppermint complimented their texture. My friend's girls proudly went home with their biscuits and I therefore proclaimed my day of babysitting a success!!

 Below is the recipe for our Peppermint Star Biscuits. I have themed ours for Christmas, but I also think they are perfect for the upcoming New Year Celebrations. The girls also called these "Shrek Biscuits" as the colour of the icing matched Shrek and Princess Fiona. They said that the Stars reminded them of Princess Fiona because they were green and sparkly (kids!) so you could also make "Shrek Biscuits" using the same biscuit and icing recipes below. I found these Shrek Cookie Cutters Online which you could use to cut out Shrek Shapes in the biscuit dough.

For the Biscuits:

Ingredients

225g Self Raising Flour

150g Butter

100g Caster Sugar

1 Beaten Egg to mix

Pinch of Salt

Method

1. Sift the flour and salt into a bowl and then rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
2. Add the sugar and mix, then add the beaten egg and mix to a very stiff dough.
3. Bring the dough together with your fingers to form a ball, turn out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth.
4. Place the dough mixture into a ziploc bag and chill for 30 minutes.
5. Once ready, remove from the fridge and roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to about the thickness of a one pound coin.
6. Take a cookie cutter and cut the dough into the desired shape (I used a star cutter and made about 24 biscuits).
7. Transfer to a pre-greased baking tray, prick the biscuits well with a fork and bake at 180 degrees celsius for around 12 to 15 minutes until the biscuits are a pale golden colour.
8. Once cooked, remove from the oven, transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool.
9. Once cooled, decorate with peppermint icing and decorations.

For the Peppermint Icing:

Ingredients

450g Icing Sugar

1 Egg White

A few drops of Peppermint Essence

A few drops of Green Food Colouring

Warm Water to mix to the desired consistency

Method

1. Sift the icing sugar into a bowl.
2. Whisk the egg white in a separate bowl until frothy
3. Add the egg to the icing sugar and combine. Gradually add the peppermint essence and mix together to form a thick paste.
4. Add a couple of drops of the food colouring until you have the desired colour
5. Mix to the desired consistency for icing by adding a teaspoon of warm water at a time
6. Ice the biscuits immediately and add decorations if desired, or cover and refrigerate for later use.