Scandanavian Snowflake Cookies

Adapted from food dot com

~from Savoring Time in the Kitchen

Makes about 30 Snowflake Cookies

2 cups plain flour

1 cup icing sugar

11 tablespoons/150g of chilled butter, cubed

1 large egg, at room temperature

1 teaspoon almond or vanilla extract

Milk, to mix

4 ounces of your favorite white icing

Edible glitter or edible sparkling cake dusting powder

Place flour and the icing sugar in a food processor. Process for 30 seconds. Add butter. Process until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add egg and vanilla. Process until dough comes together. If it is too dry, add some milk.

Transfer to a lightly floured surface. Knead dough until smooth. Press or roll into a 9"/20cm circle. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour or until firm.

Preheat oven to 180C/360F, and line 2 flat baking/cookie trays with parchment paper or silicone liners. Roll out dough between 2 sheets of parchment paper until about 1/8-1/4"/5mm thick.

Using snowflake biscuit/cookie cutters, cut shapes out of dough. Place on them gently on to the trays. (It is important to work with very cold dough to get the shapes to release properly.) Press leftover dough together and repeat cutting out shapes, chilling dough again, if it gets too sticky to work with.

Bake the cookies for 10 minutes, swapping trays after 5 minutes, or until just golden around the edges. Allow to cool on trays completely.

Decorate with white icing and then dust them with edible glitter/edible silver dusting powder while the icing is still wet.

Note: to make holes for hanging on the Christmas Tree: Just before baking, take a plastic drinking straw and press into the top of the snowflake shapes. If the holes have closed up while baking, use the drinking straw again while they are still hot to open the hole.