Christmas tree decorations

The idea for these is shamelessly nicked from Nigella Lawson's How to Be a Domestic Goddess. They are deliciously spicy/peppery, and rather good fun to decorate.

You'll need:

300g plain flour
100g butter
100g dark brown sugar
2 eggs
4 tablespoons runny honey
a pinch of salt
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of ground allspice
2 teaspoons ground black pepper

Turn the oven on to 170 degrees C.

Stick the flour, baking powder and spices/pepper/salt in the food processor, and give them a good whizz round. Chop up the butter into little pieces, and then shove in the blender too. Give it a quick blitz, and then add the sugar. Whizz round until it's all combined.

Beat the 2 eggs with the runny honey, until you get a delightful gloopy mess. Add this to the food processor too, and the mixture will start to come together into a beautifully spicy brown dough.

Roll the dough out thinly (about half a centimetre or less) - you'll need a fair amount of flour so it doesn't stick. Cut out whatever shapes you fancy - we did hearts, stars (large and small), and some rather nifty Christmas trees.

Take a small pointy object (I used the nozzle of the icing gun, but a straw or skewer would do), and poke a hole in the top of the decoration - you'll need this to thread some ribbon through to hang on the tree.

Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes - they'll turn brown(er), and won't be doughy underneath.

Once they've cooled down, you can ice them, which is the really fun part. We did ours with an icing gun, and so made royal icing. You'll need:

one egg, separated into white and yolk
icing sugar - about 225g, but you might need a little more

Sift the icing sugar through a sieve into the egg white. Mix round until you have a smooth, glossy icing. You want it fairly stiff if you're going to pipe it through an icing bag, or use an icing gun.

This makes quite a lot of icing - we used the other half to decorate the gingerbread house we bought from IKEA. It keeps in an airtight tin for a few days if you've made slightly too much.