Colorful cookies are tailor-made for family baking sessions

Baking during the holiday season is a tradition in many households across the globe. Family baking sessions provide a perfect holiday season bonding activity, and the payoff is both cherished family time and delicious, indulgent foods once the items are ready to eat.

Holiday hosts know they’ll need to feed their guests over the course of their stay, and that includes snacks. This holiday season, hosts can involve their guests in family baking sessions and whip up a batch of these delicious and colorful “Christmas Biscuits” from Lines+Angles.

Christmas Biscuits

Makes approximately 24

cookies.

For the dough:

11/2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted, plus extra for dusting 11/3 cups confectioner’s sugar, plus extra for dusting 3/4 cup almond meal 1 cup unsalted butter, cold and cubed 1 large egg yolk 1 tablespoon cold water 1/2 teaspoon fine salt For the icing and decoration: 4 cups confectioner’s sugar 3 tablespoons meringue powder 7 tablespoons warm water, combined with 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, assorted food color (e. g., red, pink and turquoise), assorted colored sugar crystals (e. g., red, pink and white) Directions:

1. For the dough: Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. Combine flour, confectioner’s sugar and almond meal in a large mixing bowl. Stir well to mix.

3. Add butter, egg yolk, water, and salt, and mix well with an electric mixer with spiral attachments until mixture starts to come together as a dough.

4. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead briefly until even. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes.

5. After chilling, roll out dough on a lightly floured surface to approximately 0.25” thickness.

6. Use assorted starshaped cookie cutters to cut out approximately 23 variably sized star shapes. Arrange between prepared sheets, spaced apart.

7. From remaining dough, cut out one teardrop and two semi-circles of dough, using appropriate cutters or working freehand with a paring knife. Arrange on one of the baking sheets.

8. Bake cookies for 12 to 15 minutes, until golden and dry to the touch. Remove to cooling racks to cool.

9. For the icing and decoration: Thoroughly stir together confectioner’s sugar and meringue powder in a large mixing bowl.

10. Gradually beat in warm water and vanilla extract mixture using an electric mixer until icing is smooth and of a flooding consistency; you may not need all of the water.

11. Divide icing between three bowls. Color two bowls pink and red, respectively, by beating in enough pink and red coloring to achieve uniform colors. Leave the third bowl uncolored.

12. Spoon pink and red icing into separate piping bags fitted with small, round-tip nozzles.

13. To ice the cookies, pipe around their perimeters with the icings to create borders. Fill in middle of cookies with more icing; you can use a damp, warm offset palette knife to spread out icing to an even finish.

14. Carefully transfer iced cookies to cooling racks, decorating with the sugar crystals in festive patterns.

15. Using same technique as in steps 13 and 14, ice teardrop cookie with red and white icing for Santa’s hat and beard, respectively. Ice the two semi-circle cookies with white icing.

16. Before icings have set, carefully attach semi-circle cookies to teardrop cookie to fashion Santa’s mustache. Color any remaining white icing with turquoise coloring and then dab onto teardrop cookie for Santa’s eyes. Pipe some pink icing below eyes for his nose.

17. Let cookies set and harden before serving.

Tip: Flooding consistency should be similar to the consistency of toothpaste. If your icing is too thick, thin it out with some warm water, mixing it into the icing in drops Preparation time: 1 hour, 20 minutes

Cooling time: 30 minutes