These Father Christmas cookies are crisp, light and gently spiced, then decorated with sugar paste to create very fun, very tasty and very festive treats.
Put the flour, sugar and mixed spice in a large bowl. Mix well.
Add the butter to the bowl. Rub the mix through until you get an even crumb.
Add in the lemon extract and milk. Mix with a round knife until the dough starts to clump.
Use your hands to gather the dough into a ball. If it's unmanageably soft, wrap and pop in the fridge for 15 mins to chill and firm.
Turn the dough out on to a floured surface. For space, I find it easiest to work with half the dough at a time.
Roll the dough out very thinly - just 2-3mm (1/8 of an inch).
Cut as many men out as you can. Gather up any offcuts, rolling and cutting until all the dough is used up.
Place the cookies on lined trays. Bake in the centre of the oven for about 8 mins until just colouring at the edges.
Allow the cookies to cool enough to firm up, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Make Father Christmas's suits
Lightly dust your surface with cornflour. Roll your red sugar paste out very thinly.
Use your gingerbread man cutter to cut out as many shapes as you can.
Trim away the off the head and ends of the arms and legs to create little Santa suits. I used the head part of my gingerbread man cutter to do this, creating a shape almost like a romper suit.
Dab a very sparing touch of water onto the surface of a cookie.
Apply a Santa suit, smoothing gently with your fingers to work into shape as needed. You can use offcuts to shape a little hat for your Santas too.
Note: it's best to apply all of your suits before moving on as otherwise the sugar paste dry out and become harder to work with.
Add the details
Start with the white icing pen. Drawing in tiny circles, you'll need to draw: trim along the wrists and ankles of the suit; trim and a bobble on the hat; Father Christmas's beard; trim running down the centre of his suit to his waist.
Now use a black icing pen to give Father Christmas a friendly smile. You can also draw a belt along his middle.
Finally, use your yellow pen to add a little belt buckle.
Make Mother Christmas
Form two small balls of sugar paste and apply to the moistened cookie surface (see pics).
As before, apply a suit (or dress), smoothing gently with your fingers to work into shape as needed.
Add all the same details as you gave Father Christmas, plus any extra flourishes you fancy.
Repeat until all of your cookies are decorated. Aren't they just ridiculously sweet and funny?