I am finally beginning to feel a little festive now- we have decorated our christmas tree, the fairy lights are up and my ipod is loaded with cheesy christmas music- brilliant! As usual, I like to bake a range of goodies in theme with the season, and so I started with some iced vanilla biscuits. You see, my mum bought me a new set of cookie cutters from Ikea and I just couldn't wait to use them!

I was a little worried that some of the biscuit shapes wouldn't hold up in the oven-particularly the reindeer (!) but luckily my dough didn't let me down and they came out perfectly. Once baked and cooled, I just had to ice them-always a little tricky but once you get going it does seem to get easier!

I packaged the biscuits up in threes, putting the elves, boots and snowflakes together, and the santas, sleighs and reindeer together- what do you think?

Something else that I always tend to make at christmas time are florentines. These are delicious crisp-on-the-outside, chewy-in-the-middle biscuits made with nuts, glace cherries and dried fruit, then half coated in chocolate. I think that they make a lovely gift if wrapped up nicely with some pretty ribbon, and they tend to last quite a while so you can make them in advance!

My next job is to decorate our christmas cake I made a few weeks ago, but I'm still trying to come up with ideas. If you have any suggestions, please do let me know!