Cinnamon Treats

Adding yet another cooking to my repertoire .. I introduce to you Cinnamon Treats ... displayed oh so lovely in one of my vintage Noritake cookie dishes (courtesy of my Mum!).

Ingredients: makes 50 ....

250g of plain flour
1/2 tea spoon of salt
2 tsp of ground cinnamon
225g of unsalted butter at room temperature
225g of caster sugar (you can use normal sugar but it will be a bit grainy)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence.

Process

I use my benchtop mixer for these, but you can do it by hand if you wish

1. Put oven on at 180/190 degrees
   
2. Cream the butter and sugar until white light and fluffy.
3. Add the vanilla essence and egg to the fluffy mixture.
4. Combine all dry ingredients together and then add to the wet mixture one spoonful at a time.
5. Split the mixture up into 4 equal parts.
   
6. With floured hands, mould the mixture into round logs, cover in foil and then into the freezer to harden.
7. This mixture is really hard to work with unless it is partly frozen- yes I have tried!
   
8. Once it is hard, bring out of the freezer and slice into 5mm slices and then onto a baking tray. The cookies will spread when cooked in the oven, so leave plenty of space around them. This recipe is about 4 trays worth of cookies (yum!)
9. When cooked nice and golden, onto a drying rack with a spatula.
10. Make cup of coffee
11. Eat slightly warm cookies!

Ideas for improvements

• Add some currants
  
• Add some orange zest
• Add christmas flavours like nutmeg
• You could also mould it into a flat pan and cut the mixture into squares once it is cooked (just like you would shortbread)