Soph’s not a fan of anise flavours, but I love them. So the only way I’m going to get to bake anything anise flavoured is if I do them for my work colleagues.

This week I got myself some new cookie cutters, one in the shape of a jigsaw piece and a set of hexagon ones which will tesselate nicely and avoid re-rolling. So I want to do a cutout biscuit.

Browsing through my biscuit books I managed to find Mexican Biscochitos, which are an anise flavoured cutout cookie, in 400 Cookies & Biscuits:

• 175g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 115g unsalted butter
• 115g caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp aniseeds, ground in a pestle & mortar
• 1 tbsp brandy
• Caster sugar for sprinkling

Mix flour, baking powder, salt & aniseed. Cream butter & sugar, then beat in the eggs & brandy. Mix in the dry ingredients. Chill before rolling out.

Roll out the dough and cut with the jigsaw & hexagon cutters. They tessellated nicely and avoided re-rolling as planned (well except for the extras I baked up for myself :).

Onto lined baking sheets and sprinkle with sugar. Chill before baking (to avoid unwanted spread, although given the cakey base this is probably unavoidable!).

Bake at 160C fan for 12 minutes, swapping over half way through, before cooling on the rack.

They held their shape pretty well! They have a pretty strong anise flavour, so definitely not for Soph, but great for me!