Stained glass stars

My christmas baking wish list sadly wasnt completed this year. But I did try something I have always been a little bit facinated with. Stained glass stars. They look too pretty to eat and i've always wondered how they got that stained glass effect in the middle.

They are a little but time consuming - waiting for the dough to chill in the fridge and then rolling and cutting over and over - but they taste delicious with their different flavoured centres.

Pre-baking: Two different sized star cutters are used so you end up with both a small shortbread star and a large star with a fruit drop in the middle.

Post-baking: golden shortbreads and melted, transparent fruit drops.

Enough to feed an army, but so pretty!

Stained glass biscuits

Ingredients

125 g butter

2/3 cup icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 cups plain flour

1 egg  

Fruit flavoured boiled lollies

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 °C. Line 2 baking trays with non-stick baking paper. Using electric beaters, beat butter and icing sugar until light and creamy. Beat in vanilla and egg.

2. Mix in flour with a knife until evenly combined. Gather dough into a ball. Turn out onto a sheet of non-stick baking paper. Press out dough, then roll to 5mm thickness.                                                     3. Use larger star biscuit cutter to cut star shapes from dough (cut the shapes close together to get as many as you can first time around). Pile scraps together (don't knead them) and gently roll out again. Cut more shapes. Repeat to use as much dough as possible.                                                    

4. Place onto the prepared trays. Use smaller star cutter to cut out the centre of the biscuits and set aside.                                                       

5. Place one boiled lolly in the middle of each larger star and bake for 10-15 minutes or until lolly has completely melted and shortbread is just started to turn golden.

6. Cool on trays for 15 mins then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.