Festive Star Tree

Whilst considering the 'options' for baking Seasonal Fare the other day, Sous Chef J decided he'd like to make a tree using star cutters (using the cutters we'd bought whilst shopping last week).  He messed about stacking the cutters up to see if his creation would work and then set me the task of finding a recipe to use for the biscuits we'd need to bake.  I found a remarkably similar idea on the Sainsbury's website and decided it looked like something we could adapt to be gluten free.  This wasn't the only alteration we made... Sous Chef J wanted gingerbread stars so we substituted ground ginger for the ground cinnamon the recipe lists.

Thus, we used the following ingredients:-

• 200g unsalted butter, softened
• 200g caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 medium egg, beaten
• 400g Dove's Farm Gluten Free plain flour

To start with, the butter, sugar and ginger were creamed together using an electric mixer until light and fluffy.

Next we added the egg and flour and mixed it well - first of all using a silicone spatula, then bringing the dough together by hand.





The dough was then cut in half and placed in plastic bags.  One bag was labelled and put in the freezer for use at a later date, the other was chilled in the fridge for almost an hour.


Taking the dough from the fridge, we rolled out small pieces on silicone lining paper (we find this really helps to stop sticking) and cut out the stars.

Each star was lifted from the paper with a palette knife and put on a greased, non-stick baking sheet.

When all the dough had been used up, the stars were baked in the oven at 150ºC (fan) for about 12-15 minutes... you need to check them as the larger stars take longer than the smaller biscuits.

Once baked, the stars were left on the baking tray to cool for 10 minutes before being transferred to a cooling rack to completely cool down.

We stacked the stars, sticking them with icing sugar and water mix and layering them.

Next, small blobs of the icing were used to glue a decoration on - Sous Chef J chose some Dr Oetker Chocolate Beans to be the 'baubles'.

A small sugar star for the top and our creation was complete!




Next time we make these we will add more ground ginger as, although the biscuits are tasty, there isn't much of a ginger flavour... so it's either that or call it a shortbread tree instead.