Great for your Christmas Table

I made this for our Christmas table last year and it looked fantastic, it was pretty good to eat afterwards too. In the hot weather you have to be a bit careful, by the end of lunch it was leaning over a bit, the icing that was holding the stars together slowly softened.

TIP : Can make the stars the day before but need to assemble about an hour before putting on the table.

Ingredients

3 1/3 cups (500g) plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
3 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
150g unsalted butter, softened
175g dark brown sugar
150g honey
1 egg
Icing - you can make your own or you can use the ready made icing if you like, either works fine.
1 eggwhite
1 1/2 cups icing sugar, sifted, plus extra for dusting
Lollies (candy) for decorating. I used jellies but you could use m&m’s, smarties, marshmallows, silver cachous, whatever takes your fancy really, and makes the tree look pretty.

What to do to put it all together.

1. Preheat oven to 180℃/350℉.

2. Sift flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, spices and a pinch of salt into a bowl.

3. Using an electric mixer, beat butter and brown sugar until fluffy. Add honey and egg. Beat until combined.

4. On low speed, beat in sifted dry ingredients until mixture comes together. Divide dough in half. Wrap separately in plastic. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

5. As you need to make large stars for the bottom and middle of the tree, you unfortunately won’t find cutters the size you need. But don’t panic you can make your own. You will need to make a 19cm, 15cm and 10cm stars by cutting out a cardboard shape. Draw your star and cut it out of the cardboard, for the 7.5cm and 4.5cm stars you can get cutters, or of course you can make these from cardboard also.

6. Roll out the dough halves between baking paper or plastic wrap, so it doesn’t stick. (did this with the pinwheel biscuits). Until 4mm thick. Using the star templates cut out 3 stars of each size from the dough. Using the 4.5cm cutter or template, cut out as many stars as possible from the remaining dough.

7. Place same size stars together, 3cm apart on baking paper lined oven trays. Bake the larger stars for 8-10 minutes, and the smaller stars for 5-7 minutes or until deep golden brown. Stand biscuits for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool.

Now for the fun part, putting the tree together.

8. Make Icing by placing the eggwhite in a bowl. Stir in icing sugar, 2tbs at a time, until combined, or just use the ready made icing.

9. Stack the largest stars at offset angles, placing 2-3, 4.5cm stars in between. Glue each layer with icing. Continue stacking in decreasing size until all 7.5cm stars are used. Finish with one 4.5cm star flat and a second one upright. Use icing as ‘glue’ to decorate tree with what ever you have chosen to.

10. place remainder stars around the base of the plate, leave for about an hour for the icing to set. Dust with icing sugar and put in the middle of your Christmas table.

This was the picture from the magazine that I used. I thought that mine looked pretty close, what do you think?

You can also make an extra batch and make stars to decorate the Christmas tree with, a treat for all later in the day.

Enjoy! just having fun with it and decorate how ever you like. Let me know if you have any questions.

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