Christmas – an excuse to bake

I love baking. I also love eating baking, but I don’t love the distance I have to run to burn off the baking.

Luckily, my comrades at Careers New Zealand are quite partial to a bit of something sweet, so finding people to eat my cooking isn’t too difficult. We find any excuse to have a morning or afternoon tea – it’s a chance to down tools, tear our eyes away from the computer screen and have a chat with each other over some cheese or chocolate (sometimes both at once!).

Here’s what I made this week: Stained glass biscuits

Stained glass butterflies

Just use your favourite biscuit recipe (I used one for gingerbread men) and, using either cookie cutters or a knife, make holes in the biscuit. Then smash up some boiled lollies (I used mini snaplock bags to make sure the crumbs didn’t go everywhere as I was bashing them with a rolling pin) and sprinkle them in.

Uncooked butterflies, with boiled lolly crumbs in the holes

In the oven the lollies will melt and form your “stained glass”. This technique will make stunning Christmas-themed cookies – stars and Christmas trees would look cool.

Bringing in treats to share with your workmates not only stops you from eating the whole batch, it also makes work a happy place to be!