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Method

1. Heat the golden syrup, sugar and butter into a medium saucepan over a medium heat. Stir until the mixture is heated and the sugar completely dissolved. Remove from the heat and add the cream and spices.

2. Add the flour and bicarbonate of soda, stirring as you add it until you have a loose mixture. Place a sheet of parchment paper on a baking tray and tip the mixture on top. Cover with another piece of parchment and flatten the dough slightly. Leave to cool in the fridge for 2–3 hours. After this you should have a thick dough.

3. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4.

4. Remove the dough from the fridge and roll between the sheets of paper with a rolling pin until 1cm/½in thick.

5. Dust a work surface with flour and roll the dough out with a floured rolling pin until 5mm/¼in thick (as you want the biscuits to only rise slightly when cooking and be nice and crisp when cooked).

6. Using a floured cutter of your choice, cut out the biscuits and place onto the lined baking tray. You may need to cook these in batches or use two trays if they don’t all fit on one. Any scraps of dough can be pressed together, rerolled and cut out .

7. Bake the biscuits for 8–10 minutes, or until they are rich brown at the sides and slightly paler in the centre.

8. If you intend to hang the biscuits up (say from a Christmas tree), pierce a small hole in the top of the biscuit immediately after they come out of the oven and place on a wire rack to cool.

9. Once cool, you can thread ribbon or string through the hole at the top of the biscuit to hang from the tree. Store in an airtight container so that the biscuits remain crisp.