Shortbread Stars

Here's a Christmas recipe that ended up differently to what I had in mind. I'd seen a recipe somewhere that involved making star biscuits, cutting a star from the centre and filling it with melted chocolate. But when I came to make it, I couldn't find the recipe! So I decided to just make it anyway, using shortbread for my biscuits. I thought I'd make half of the mixture chocolate for a bit of variety, and when I saw all the little stars cut out of the biscuits, I scrapped the melted chocolate idea and experimented with putting the opposite colour star in the middle of each biscuit. Well it worked a treat and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out! Make sure you don't roll out the mixture too thin - they really are much nicer when it's a thicker biscuit.

Ingredients
250g butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1/3 cup caster sugar
2 cups plain flour, sifted
1/3 cup rice flour, sifted
1 tablespoon cocoa, sifted

Method
Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

 Using an electric mixer, beat butter, vanilla and sugar in a bowl until light and fluffy. Stir in flours. Divide mixture in half and add cocoa to one half.

Turn mixtures onto floured surface and knead separately until dough comes together.

Roll between sheets of baking paper until 5mm thick. If necessary (if mixture is quite soft), refrigerate for half an hour. Cut out large stars from both mixtures, then cut out small stars from the middle of each biscuit. Put small stars into each biscuit of the opposite colour.

Place on lined baking trays and bake for 10-12 minutes. Cool on wire racks.