The great thing about Christmas drawing nearer, is the fact we can unashamedly drink our favourite festive brew, spiced winter red tea, all day, every day. But why just drink it, when you can bake spiced winter snowman biscuits!? Just in time for the festive season, we've teamd up with the wonderful Frances Quinn to bring you a fab festive treat, inspired by none other than our spiced winter snowman! Have a read of her fun recipe below, and be sure to show us snaps of your finished products!
Using the basic gingerbread recipe in my book ‘Quinntessential Baking’ I have swapped the ground ginger for cinnamon to pick up on the central ingredient in the tea itself. I’ve also added the zest of an orange to the blend of syrup and spices to enhance the teas warming festive flavours. Once made, the biscuit dough requires no cutters or rolling pins to turn into snowmen shapes. A cocktail stick, clove and paintbrush is all that’s required to add the snowman's features.
The same paintbrush can be used to create edible brushstrokes around the biscuits, in chocolate paint no less! Whether used as a tea tin or biscuit tin, I’d recommend storing both biscuits and tea pig temples together. ‘Mulled’ together the biscuits take on more of the mulled wine flavours in the tea. Finally, dunked or dusted in icing sugar snow, here’s to capturing the best bits of winter, via both tea and biscuits!
INGREDIENTS
50g light muscovardo sugar
50g dark muscovardo sugar
50g golden syrup
150g butter, roughly chopped
1 orange, finely zested
1 egg
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp mixed spice
300g plain flour
To decorate…
cloves
dark chocolate
icing sugar
METHOD
Place both the sugars, the golden syrup, butter and orange zest in a heavy-based saucepan.
Set the saucepan over a medium heat and leave, stirring occasionally, until the butter has melted and the sugars have dissolved.
Take the saucepan off the heat and transfer the mixture to a large bowl. Allow to cool for about 5 minutes.
Beat the egg into the mixture. Sift in the spices and flour in two batches, mixing in each batch gently, until you have a soft dough.
Halve the mixture and transfer to two food bags, or wrap in cling film. Refrigerate for several hours, preferably overnight, to firm up.
This makes the dough easier to roll out.
To create your snow men shapes, pull off 3 varying sized pieces from your dough and roll into balls.
Flatten each one, approx a few mm thick on to baking trays pre-lined with non-stick parchment paper.
The base of the snowman's body wants to be approx 6cm wide, the middle section 5cm and head 3cm.
Once flattened and shaped into rough circles use a cocktail stick and end of a paintbrush or clove to press your snowman's features into the dough. Using an actual clove instead and left in the dough to create the snowman's nose. Referring to the snowman illustration on the spiced winter red tea packaging and photo’s of the bake itself.
Ideally chill the dough for 15-30 minutes before baking.
Bake in an oven preheated to 180c/160fan/gas4 for 10-15 minutes depending on the size of the biscuit until golden brown around the edges. Leave to cool and harden on the tray for 10 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack to fully cool.
Place your biscuits in the tin, ready to nibble, dunk and assemble into snowmen. You can illustrate around the biscuit components with a paintbrush dipped in chocolate on to a plate. To add a sweet finish and snow flurry to your snowmen you can dust the biscuits in icing sugar before enjoying with a cup of spiced winter red tea
Pick yourself up one of our beautiful tins of tea here and discover the rest of our festive Christmas shop here
Fancy seeing more of Frances and her creative bakes? Head over to http://francesquinn.co.uk/book/ and check out her fab book!
