What you’ll need
160g unsalted butter, softened
40g caster sugar
20g dark muscovado sugar (or dark brown sugar)
½ lemon finely grated zest
½ teaspoon vanilla paste
240g The Healthy Baker Plain Flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon mixed spice
½ teaspoon cardamom powder
For the cross
130g icing sugar
½ lemon lemon juice
Pre-heat oven to 150 degrees Celsius, and line two large baking trays with baking paper.
Place the butter, sugars, zest and vanilla in the bowl of the stand mixer and beat with the paddle attachment until well combined.
In a separate bowl whisk together the flour and the spices until well combined. Add the flour to the butter mix, and mix on low until a dough starts to form.
Lightly flour your work surface, and tip the dough out. Bring together with your hands then roll out to about 1-2mm thick with a rolling pin.
Cut out biscuits with a small round biscuit cutter (approx. 2 cm in diameter) and place on prepared trays. Re-roll scraps of the dough until it is all used up.
Bake in pre-heated oven for 20 minutes, turning the trays around halfway through to ensure even cooking.
Allow to cool on the trays.
Once the biscuits have cooled, make the icing my combining the icing sugar and lemon juice in a bowl. The icing should have a fairly thick consistency, so add a little more icing sugar if needed.
Transfer the icing to a piping bag (or similar), and cut a small hole at the end of the bag. Arrange the biscuits close together in rows on one tray. Ice the biscuits by drawing one long line across the centre of each row of biscuits, then do the same in the other direction to form a cross on the top of each biscuit. Allow the icing to dry a little before separating each biscuit from their rows.
