Christmas cookies take the festive biscuit

This week the chef patron of The Roost Restaurant at Bridge of Earn, gets busy making seasonal biccies

My nine-year-old daughter is currently obsessed with baking. Although I’ve experimented with her on plenty of occasions over the years, the Great British Bake Off Junior version on CBBC has really inspired her and she now insists on dedicating one evening a week to the hobby.

The results are mixed, but so far her greatest success has been with biscuits, usually chocolate.

I am quite happy to taste her wares when I get home from work and I can already tell that Christmas baking this year is going to be lots of fun.

I have been experimenting a lot with Scandinavian cookery, following a trip to Copenhagen and hosting a Nordic dinner at the restaurant.

I am planning to make hallon cookies – Danish vanilla biscuits with jam centres which I know the kids will enjoy eating, and I will let the children concentrate on shaping, baking and decorating the ginger biscuits to hang on the tree.

In Sweden, dark ginger biscuits are known as pepparkakor because they contained pepper and were originally medicinal and far spicier than they are now. In the Middle Ages, they were said to cure sicknesses such as cholera.

There is no longer pepper in the recipe that I have but they are definitely spicy as they contain cloves and cinnamon instead. I like the idea of spicing up gingerbread so that it gives warmth when eaten.

To make about 100 biscuits, you’ll need 100g butter, 200g brown sugar, 100ml dark syrup, 100ml cream, 2 tsp ground ginger, 2 tsp ground cinnamon, 2 tsp ground cloves, 850g white flour and 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda.

Mix the butter, sugar and syrup until smooth. Add cream and spices, mix the bicarbonate of soda with the flour and then mix everything together into a dough. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate overnight.

Roll out thinly and shape on greaseproof paper, transfer onto baking trays and bake in the middle of the oven for only about five minutes at 220c.

Watch them if you can while they cook as you want them to be dark but not burnt.