Edible Christmas Presents

In an effort to be more environmentally friendly at Christmas, I decided that my 2 year old and I would give homemade shortbread out as Christmas presents to friends and family. Thus avoiding the palm oil and plastic of the chocolate we would have normally gifted. Making shortbread with my 2 year old was remarkably simple and well received already!

Set Up

To make this edible Christmas present, before my 2 year old went down for his nap, we added 300g of plain flour, 200g of cold butter and 100g of sugar into our mixer and watched as the dough came together. I then turned it out and we pressed it together before putting it in the fridge to chill while my toddler napped.

Once my 2 year old was awake I dusted his little table and the rolling pin with flour, to stop the dough sticking. With a little help from myself, my son rolled out the dough and used the cutters to create different Christmas shapes. If your child is older they can roll out the dough by themselves.

So that the Christmas shapes were not squashed by an exuberant toddler we transferred each biscuit on the baking tray as they were cut.

Leave plenty of space between the shortbread because they do expand slightly in the oven. Once the baking tray was full my toddler sprinkled sugar over them and the shortbread then went in the oven for 15 mins at 150C (fan).

Of course we had to taste test our edible Christmas presents and we can confirm they are very tasty with a cup of tea and an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine. It was a really lovely Christmas activity and I hope this becomes a tradition that we do together every year.