How to… Make Lollibops (Guest Post)

Welcome to this week’s lovely “How to Make Lollibops”. By now we have all seen Annabel Karmel’s Stained Glass Window biscuits – I have seen in it various guises around the internet with varying degrees of success. BUT. Have you seen the Lollipops? Take stained glass window biscuits ONE step further and create these truly lovely and creative biscuit lollies/ lollipops. Carla & Bekka fromSisters Guild came up with this beautifully delicious idea! Move over Annabel (and followers) and make way for Carla and the girls!

And whilst on the topic of Carla – Sisters Guild is a beautiful online children’s boutique – well worth a look!  And as if window shopping isn’t enough, they also have a beautiful blog and a Monday Makery section. What more do you want?! Do stop by for a nosey!

Over to Carla!

It’s been a while since we’ve brought a recipe to the makery so in the spirit of Willie Wonka and with Lollibop in our minds we’ve been concocting lollipops with a twist. These are fantastic to make, with baking, bashing, and designing some bright stain glassed biscuit lollipops.
The smell of almond and lemon drifting through the house is pretty delicious too. These lollibops make great party bag treats and look pretty impressive on a party table too.

here’s what you’ll need:

• wooden lollipop sticks
• 200g individually wrapped sugar drops
• hundreds and thousands
• 125g unsalted butter – softened
• 1 lemon
• almond essence – 1 teaspoon
• 110g caster sugar
• 250g plain flour
• 2 eggs
• greaseproof paper
• rolling pin

Here’s how:

1. To make the biscuit dough put the butter, 1tsp almond essence, 1 egg and the grated rind of one lemon into a bowl and mix it all up with an electric mixer, start adding the flour little by little sifting as you go.
2. Now you’ll need to kneed; sprinkle an ample amount of flour over the table and kneed your dough adding more flour, sprinkle by sprinkle if it starts to get too sticky.
3. Time to cool off; cut two sheets of grease proof paper and roll out your dough between the two sheets. Once its rolled evenly (about 1/2 centimetre thick) place in the fridge to cool for about half an hour.
4. Whilst waiting for the dough, you can get bashing the sweets. Unwrap the sweets and separate by colour. Place the sweets into a sandwich bag, wrap in a tea towel and place on top of a chopping board (to protect your work surface) now take your rolling pin and bash bash bash with all your might! Repeat the process with all the different colours.
5. Preheat the oven to 180C or 160C fan assisted.
6. Take your dough from the fridge and using the largest of your round cutter cut out as many rounds as fits onto the sheet of dough. You can re-roll the dough again to make more later.
7. Move each round onto another baking sheet.
8. Now using your other cutters place the second largest on top followed by the next largest and finally your centre circle, we used a heart for some of our centres and stars for others.
9. Remove the dough from the first inner circle and then the dough from the middle. Leaving two rings within the whole circle. Repeat with the other rounds.
10. Brush with egg white and sprinkle with hundreds and thousands then carefully slide a lollipop stick underneath and into the central space.
11. Now pop into the oven for 10 minutes.
12. Remove from the oven and fill the gaps with your bashed up sweets. Put them back into the oven for a further 5 minutes.
13. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on the trays

I tied a ribbon around the stick to finish off the our lollibops. I think they look pretty yummy. The biscuit has a delicate lemon and almond taste and just the perfect crunch. The stained glass centre cracks in the mouth and the combination of the two is really delicious.

Now.. aren’t these lollibops simply devine? A truly creative take on the now popular Stained Glass Window biscuits. Beautiful. Creative. Delicious.

Now go and visit the sisters and check out their Monday Makery or their beautiful shop.