Spiced Brown Sugar and Clementine Stars

(about 30)

For biscuits:

100 g butter, softened and cubed
75 g dark muscovado or dark brown soft sugar
1 tsp golden syrup (molasses)
1 medium egg, lightly beaten
200 g plain flour, sifted
1 tsp baking powder
Grated zest of 1 clementine
2 tsp ground cinnamon
A generous pinch each of ground nutmeg, allspice and cloves

For icing:

100 g icing sugar
6 – 7 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
Edible silver balls or other decoration
Edible white glitter

1. Put the butter, sugar and golden syrup in an electric mixer (or use a large mixing bowl and an electric whisk) and mix until combined.

2. Add the beaten egg little by little, alternating with a spoonful of flour, and still mixing. Add the rest of the flour, the baking powder, clementine zest and spices. Mix to combine.

3. Tip the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and bring it together in a ball. Press the ball into a disc, wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

4. Preheat the oven to 200 ⁰C.

5. Halve the chilled dough and roll one half out on the lightly floured work surface until it is about 5 mm thick. Cut the stars with the cookie cutters and arrange the biscuits on one of the prepared baking trays. Gently re-form and re-roll the dough, then keep stamping out stars.

6. Repeat with the other half of the dough. Bake in the preheated oven for 8 – 10 minutes for smaller stars (about 6 cm) and 12 – 14 minutes for larger stars (about 8.5 cm). When they are ready, the dough will have risen slightly and the edges will be tinged with brown. Transfer to wire racks to cool.

7. To decorate, sift the icing sugar into a bowl and stir in the lemon juice – add it little by little until you have a drizzling consistency. Decorate each star with a little icing (you can pipe it if you are feeling fancy). Finish with edible silver balls and glitter.

My Tips:

The biscuits will have a rather light taste, so if you would like to have something more like gingerbread biscuits, add more of clementine zest (1 extra) and of other spices. Keep in mind that you need only little of nutmeg, cloves and especially allspice.
Keep the dough refrigerated for about 2.5 hours or longer. If you don’t have that much time, put it to a freezer for 20 – 40 minutes.
You can cut extra thin biscuits instead of thick ones if you like. The thicker ones will taste stronger though. Optimal thin biscuits should be about 2 – 3 mm thick. The biscuits you cut will be approximately as thick, as the baked ones, since they will rise only a bit.
Depending on the size that thickness of the biscuits it may make only a few minutes for them to bake. For extra thin small stars you will need only about 4 minutes to bake.
Make sure your surface is well-floured at all times, since the dough will stick, especially in the beginning. If you have problems cutting and separating the dough from the surface, it means you need to add a little bit more flour and knead it once more.
Place the cutter into flour each time before cutting in order for biscuits to have well-defined and sharp edges.
Use a thin cake knife or icing spatula to transfer biscuits to the baking tray, especially the extra thin ones.
Keep in mind that edible (silver) balls melt, so if used add them after baking.