Ingredients

• 3/4 cups butter, softened
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla paste or 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour
• 1 cup wholemeal flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup milk chocolate buttons

Method

Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each addition. Stir through the vanilla and then the self-raising flour and salt until you have a nice soft dough. Wrap this in plastic and pop in the fridge for at least an hour (or overnight or freeze for a few weeks but in this case just let defrost gently in the fridge overnight).

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and roll to about 1/2cm thickness. I find the easiest way to do this is to break the dough off and do small amounts at a time – that way you don’t end up having to handle big sheets of dough that invariably tear down the middle or stick to the bench.

Preheat the oven to 180C and line a biscuit tray with baking paper. Cut the rolled out dough into circles using a round 6cm cookie cutter or similar. Gently push a hole through near the top edge of each circle with the thick end of a chopstick and then, using the narrow end, tidy that hole up so it’s nice and neat. Place the dough circles on your prepared baking tray and bake for 10 minutes or until a light gold colour. Let cool on a wire rack.

Meanwhile, melt the chocolate in the microwave or a double boiler over simmering water. Spoon melted chocolate into a small plastic bag with a little cut in one corner or piping bag with the narrowest nozzle attachment you have, and once the biscuits are cool, pipe the numbers one two and three on the biccies. Or you could just let the kids go freestyle!

Notes

• Try to avoid rolling out the pastry too thinly as this generally means the cookies will burn or be too fragile to decorate. About 1/2cm thickness works for me!
• This recipe can also be made with a food processor, a fact I discovered only today after remembering that I’d lent my standing mixer bowl to a friend.
• This recipe was created by Local is Lovely

Serving Suggestions

Note