• Preheat oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5
• Beat the butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg a little at a time.
• Sift in the flour, mixed spice, and salt.
• Mix everything well to form a dough.
• Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes.
• Sprinkle flour onto board and roll out pastry until 5mm thick.
• Cut out festive shapes with cookie cutters
• Bake for 15 minutes until golden brown.
• Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

To decorate

• Make up icing with the icing (powdered) sugar and water - you want the consistency of thick cream. If it's too thin, add more sugar; too thick - add more water.
• You can colour the icing in one colour, or divide into batches for multiple colours. The food colouring may alter the consistency, so this is a bit trial and error! You could decorate a test biscuit - place a little icing on top and spread out - you don't want it to be falling over the edges!
• Decorate the biscuits as you like.
• You could use ready-to-use icing pens to write names or draw on patterns after the icing layer has dried. You could also add food glitter or sprinkles. These are optional! I decided to add this step because: Christmas sparkles and sprinkles!
• Store the iced spice biscuits in an airtight container for about a week.