Shortbread Stars

One of the best parts about Christmas is the food - and I love Christmas baking! Most shortbread recipes call for rice flour, but this recipe from my mum makes it too easy to whip up a batch from ingredients I have in my kitchen every day!

Shortbread

Ingredients (makes about 75 biscuits):

1/2 pound (225g) butter, softened

3/4 cup caster sugar

2 cups plain flour

1/2 cup cornflour

Cachous for decorating

1. Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius.

2. Mix butter and sugar together.  It doesn't need to be creamed, just given a bit of a workout.

3. Add sifted flour and cornflour and mix to combine.  At this stage, the mixture will be quite crumbly.  Using your hands to mix and knead the dough will help warm up the butter and get the dough to come together.

4. Roll dough out to a thickness of about 5mm.  Remember, this isn't a 'stretchy' type of dough, it just needs to be kind of pressed together (that's what makes it melt in your mouth!).  Cut out shapes and use a knife to transfer biscuits to a baking-paper-lined trays.

5. Decorate with cachous (little silver/coloured sprinkles) as much as you like.  Place trays in oven for 10 minutes or until biscuits start to turn brown.

6. Remove from oven and let biscuits sit on trays for five minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

Quickly give them away as gifts!  Otherwise, you might eat too many when you sit down with your next cup of tea!