Halloween biscuits

I have spent two days this week standing in shops, scratching my head as I wander up and down the sweet aisle. As sweets only enter my children's diet when they appear in party bags, I'm not really up on today's sweets. However, I needed some for a recipe. All I wanted was some plain boiled sweets. You would think that would be simple, the sort of thing you could pick in any corner shop. But no... instead you can buy swidgy jellies, fruity chewies, sour thingamees, enormous gobstops and unknown sweets hidden behind wrappers containing TV characters. Boiled sweets are terrible for the teeth, maybe that's why they aren't very popular anymore. Ho-hum... eventually I tracked them down in a large supermarket under a silly name something like "sparkling gems".

Today was the last fundraising cake stall before Halloween so the children were encouraged to bring in Halloween theme cakes and biscuits. So last night I made a batch of gingerbread dough and cut out 10 pumpkin shaped biscuits from it. My daughters then cut out pumpkin lantern type faces from the biscuits and filled in the spaces with pieces of crushed boiled sweets. When cooked the boiled sweets melt and fill in the spaces like a stained glass window. Simple... apart from finding somewhere to buy the boiled sweets!

Halloween Biscuits

4 oz (110 g) dark brown sugar
4 oz (110 g) golden syrup
2 oz (50 g) butter
8 oz (225 g) plain flour
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 heaped teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
Boiled sweets

Heat the butter, sugar and syrup in a pan until just melted. Set aside to cool. Sift the flour, spices, salt and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl. Add the melted mix to the dry mix and stir until combined into a soft dough. Spoon the dough into Clingfilm and refrigerate for half an hour. Preheat an oven to 190 °C, 375 °F, gas mark 5. Cover a baking tray with greased greaseproof or parchment paper. Taking small pieces of dough at a time, roll it out and cut out pumpkin shapes either with a special cutter or by trimming pieces of a circular biscuit.

Use a sharp knife to cut out faces in the biscuits. Transfer the biscuit to the baking tray then place a boiled sweet in the holes in the face. Cook in the oven for 10 minutes until the biscuits have browned and the sweets melted. Remove from the oven and allow the biscuits to cool completely before removing them from the tray.