Christmas Cinnamon Shortbread - Low Sugar, suitable for diabetics

As you may have seen from previous blog posts in the past few days, I've been making lots of edible Christmas gifts. I found out at the last minute however that one of my boyfriend's relatives isn't meant to be eating sugar at the moment, which means the shortbread I'd planned to make him would be no good! I thought this would be a good opportunity to try out a low sugar recipe and even though the planned recipient isn't diabetic, I found what looked like a good recipe on the Diabetes UK website.

You need:

250g plain flour
175g butter or marg
grated rind of 1 orange
2 tsp ground cinnamon
to serve:
2 tsp icing sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Mix the flour and the butter until you have a breadcrumb-like texture

Add the orange rind, cinnamon and sugar

Mix everything together

The recipe says to add 2 tbsp water to form a dough but I found my mixture was sticky enough already so I didn't do this.  Next roll it out on a surface lightly dusted with flour or icing sugar and cut out Christmassy shapes.

Place on a greased and lined baking sheet and bake for about 10-15 minutes depending on the thickness of your biscuits. The recipe I used doesn't actually give the oven temperature so I guessed and did them at about 160C (fan).

Leave to cool on a wire rack then mix icing sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over the top.

I packaged these up in another of the cute cake tins I bought from Ikea - they were three for £5 featuring a large rectangular tin, a medium sized square tin and a small round tin.

I hope the recipient likes them!

I have already sent poor Ros countless entries for this month's Alphabakes as everything I've been baking seems to begin with the letter S... and this shortbread is no exception! Sorry Ros, you're probably getting fed up with me now.....

I expect Calendar Cakes has had a lot of entries this month too as their theme is Christmas! So I am also sending this to the challenge hosted by Laura of Laura Loves Cakes and Rachel of Dolly Bakes.

 

I am also sending this to the Spice Trail's cinnamon challenge.