Stained-Glass Christmas Cookies

Ingredients:
250g butter, softened
2 teaspoons lemon rind
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
3/4 (165g) cups caster sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon water
2 1/4 cups (335g) plain flour
90g individually wrapped boiled lollies

Method:
1. Beat butter, rind, essence, sugar, egg and water with an electric mixer until smooth (be careful to not overbeat). Fold in flour then knead on a floured surface until smooth. Cover with a plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

2. In the meantime, preheat an oven to 180C/moderate and line two oven trays with baking paper
3. Using the handle of a rolling pin, gently tap the wrapped lollies to crush slightly. Then unwrap the lollies and placed into separate bowls by colour. (The boiled lollies I bought we’re particularly hard to crush to I ended up grinding them quickly in a coffee grinder which still worked perfectly fine)

4. Roll the dough out to around 4 mm thick and use medium size cookie cutters to cut shapes into the dough then use small sized cookie cutters to cut out the centre of each cookie. Then bake for around 5 minutes. 

5. Remove trays from oven and fill the cut out centres with all the different coloured lollies! Bake for another 5 minutes or until pale golden. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on the trays and bobs your uncle!

And if you feeling in the festive mood – you can make a hole at the top of the cookie before baking which you can then slip some ribbon through ready to hang, decorate and give as gifts!

Now these little fellas are ready to enjoy!