Stained Glass Window Biscuits
Christmas in our house has always been a time of feasting and festive making. Growing up my Mum was the queen of the Christmas craft and festive snacks and nibbles. Long before Pinterest or Instagram was even a thing, she would pour over the Good Food Magazine, scour Good Housekeeping, delve into Delia’s Christmas Book and search Sainsbury's Food Magazines for the newest recipes and latest Christmas craft activity.
I remember spending afternoons painstakingly threading popcorn to make garlands, fashioning all manner of decorations out of paper mache. Mum would be in the kitchen, tea towel flung over her shoulder, recipe book precariously balanced on the side, pages thumbed and marked and her infamous book of lists on the side with an hour by hour timetable for the Christmas day lunch. She would magically rustle up delicious filo pastry mince pies, cheese straws to die for and lovingly labour over gingerbread houses.
One of my Mum’s best festive party tricks and my absolute favourite thing to do was stained glass window biscuits. A nifty trick involving boiled sweets and biscuits. Aged seven, I was in awe of the magic that would take place in the oven as the boiled sweets turned into liquid and set within the biscuits. Glistening windows of sparkly magic that could be hung on trees but which were pretty much devoured instantly, once the molten sugar had cooled or left on the tree for our dog to come along and snaffle them up.
As our family grew and we spread across counties and countries and multiplied and married, Christmas’s have become smaller and more intimate affairs. But since having my own children I’ve always wanted to recreate the magic of the memories that my Mum made for us growing up.
Along the way, I’ve learnt the recipes and we’ve borrowed the tradition from our time in Berlin of baking biscuits and spending an afternoon coming together with friends and family to decorate them. We turn up the Christmas tunes, pop mulled wine in a pan and the house starts to fill with friends and family. The smell of freshly baked biscuits and mince pies lingers in the air and it’s a chance to gather and celebrate before the mad rush of the festive month begins in earnest.
Plates of biscuits, multiple bowls of sprinkles, hundreds and thousands, silver balls, fluorescent icing and coloured tubes of writing icing are laid across the dining table and the crafting station is set up in the corner.
Last year, we brought the tradition with us to Lisbon. New to the country and with just a handful of friends it was a mad sugar-fuelled affair. With all the adults playing musical chairs in our little kitchen as we didn’t have enough furniture. A crazy couple of hours with snatched conversations and hyper children ensued, it was also the beginning of new friendships.
But this year is very different. As we now face more restrictions and limitations, the pain of being apart continues to throb, a low dull ache that threatens to split heartstrings is omnipresent as Christmas approaches. The thought of Christmas without my extended family is so hard to contemplate.
But....
As 2020 comes to a close, I am determined to recreate some festive magic and not let the sense of loss and dread loom. So, we spend an afternoon Christmas crafting and baking. We make the stained glass biscuits and crank up the Christmas tunes and mull some cider on the stove. As the biscuits cool on the side and my little one looks in awe at her stained glass creations, she says ‘But Mummy I can see through it, that’s magic!’.
And, I am yet again reminded by my children (the best teachers of all) that even in the darker times you can still find a way to let in the light.
Lucy Beckley