Ingredients

Step by step

1. Put the butter, brown sugar and golden syrup in a saucepan and heat gently until melted and combined. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, bicarb and spices. Slowly pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, stirring continuously until the mixture comes together into a dough. Leave to cool, then shape into a disc, wrap in clingfilm and chill for 1 hour.
2. Preheat the oven to 200°C, fan 180°C, gas 6 and line two large baking trays. Make three or four triangle templates of differing sizes to form your Christmas trees (ours were 4cm x 8cm, 6cm x 10cm and 8cm x 15cm). Halve the dough and roll out one half, between two sheets of baking paper, to around 3mm thick. Using the templates, cut out as many triangles as you can of differing sizes, making sure you have three equal-size triangles for each tree, re-rolling the offcuts as you go. Transfer to the lined baking trays, keeping the similar- sized triangles together on a tray. Cut out stars from some of the medium and larger triangles – you only need to cut a star from one triangle per tree. Place the star cutouts on the tray with the smallest biscuits. Bake the small biscuits for 7 minutes and the larger ones for 10 minutes. Repeat with the remaining dough.
3. Put the Biscoff spread in a piping bag and snip off right at the end so you have a small piping hole. To construct the trees, stick 3 equal-size triangles together by piping the edges with Biscoff and sticking together. Use a palette knife to smooth the edges.
4. Arrange the trees on the cake board, placing the tea lights inside the larger trees. Decorate the tops of the trees with star cocktail sticks, or by piping a dollop of Biscoff on top and adding a gold pearl. Decorate the board with the mini star biscuits and remaining pearls. Spray the trees with gold glitter spray and dust with icing sugar just before serving.