Gruyere Cheese Stars

I was having a look through the Marks and Spencer's catalogue and found a recipe for these biscuits. They looked so yummy I had to try them! They were sooooo tasty I'm going to make more (Don't worry I didn't eat them all!). The only changes I made was putting them on a greased tray, not baking paper but them came of fine, also I used rosemary on the top.


The recipe is in the free Christmas magazine, but for those who can't get hold of it here it is:

Makes approx 26

125g Plain Flour
100g unsalted butter, diced
1/4 tsp mild chilli powder
100g Gruyere cheese, finely grated
1 tbsp milk
caraway seeds or rosemary
to decorate

1. Put the flour, butter and chilli powder in a food processor and pulse until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the cheese and pulse again to bring the dough together. Shape into a flat disc, wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for 1 hour until firm.



2. Heat the oven to 180 C/350 F/gas 4. Line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to 5mm thickness. Use a 5-6cm star-shaped cutter to stamp out the biscuits, then re-roll the trimmings to stamp out more.

3. Put the stars on the baking sheets, brush the milk and sprinkle with caraway seeds or rosemary. Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden. Leave to cool.

N.B. Per biscuit: 57 calories, 4.2g fat, 0.2g salt.

Practice Pies

As it's December I thought I'd do a little Christmas Baking. My Christmas cake is baked and being fed regularly with Cointreau. I did skip on making a proper pudding though, as I just couldn't handle watching it steam for 7.5 hours, especially as I've never steamed anything before. As I'm a firm believer in not waiting until one day of the year to eat your favourite things, I made some mince pies.

Strangely I've never made mince pies before, so these are my practice pies. The pastry recipe I used was a bit short, so I think I'll just have to give them another go (yay more mince pies!)

I like Christmas Trees as a wee change from the usual stars too. I also bulked up the sweet mincemeat with some stewed apples. It makes a moister filling and goes further. Off to sample them now, yum...