Wouldn’t it be great to give a home-made, customized and delicious present to your friends and family for Christmas?!

So here is an extra buttery shortbreads recipe from my pastry class, in which I added a spices mix. And then I decorated the shortbreads with some special icing for the final touch. The shortbreads look very nice and are so good!

When you bake them in the oven, an amazing Christmas scent starts filling the air! These shortbreads are fragrant and crispy. It’s a delightful, cheap and easy-to-make Christmas present that will bring so much joy to your relatives.

Feel free to make your own spices mix with ginger, clove, cardamom, paprika, black pepper, anise, cinnamon, nutmeg, liquorice, etc. Plunge into your spices cabinet, choose the fragrances, mix, smell, add, until you get what you would call the Christmas magic scent…

Prep: 30 minutes

Fridge: 1 hour 30 minutes

Baking: 10 minutes

Makes 30 to 40 shortbread cookies

• 1 cup flour
• 3/4 cup cold butter
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 2 egg yolks
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 tsp spices mix

For the icing :

• 1 cup icing sugar
• 1/2 egg white
• 2 tsp lemon juice

In a big bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, salt and spices mix.

Add the butter cut into small cubes and crumble with your fingers into the flour, until there’s no more butter and you get like a wet sand mixture.

Add sugar and mix. Then add yolks and squash the dough with your palm against the table until it’s perfectly mixed.

Make a ball and roll the dough out between two baking sheets with a rolling pin, until 0.2 inches thick.

Put on a tray and let rest in the fridge at least one hour or overnight is even better.

With a cookie cutter, cut the dough to form the extra buttery shortbreads. Put them on a baking sheet with enough space between the shortbreads to let them grow in the oven.

Put them back in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before baking.

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Bake for 5 to 10 minutes according to the size of the shortbreads.

Meanwhile, spread the rest of the dough between two sheets again, and put it back in the fridge for the second batch.

While the shortbreads cool, prepare the icing. Stir the sifted icing sugar with egg white. Then add the lemon juice.

Cut a triangle on a baking paper sheet, and roll into a small cone. Fill with icing, close up and cut the tip with scissors. Use like a pen to decorate the extra buttery shorbreads.

Let the icing harden and put the shortbreads in a tin box to keep them crispy.