Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

Mix in the egg and vanilla extract.

Mix in the spices.

Sieve in the flour and combine into a dough. If it is a bit crumbly to hold, add a few drops of water at a time to help bring it together.

Once the dough has come together, wrap it in cling film (saran wrap) and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Dust a surface with a little flour. Roll out the dough with a regular rolling pin to just thicker than 1cm - around ½". You will want to use a little flour on the rolling pin too. Try to keep the dough rectangle and no wider than the width of your embossed rolling pin.

Lightly flour then roll over the dough with the embossed rolling pin with medium pressure. Just enough to create the pattern with sufficient sharpness but not so hard that you press the pattern out of shape.

Use the cookie cutters to cut out the shapes you want and pop the cookies on a greaseproof paper lined baking tray. Again it is helpful to dip the cutters in a little flour before each cut. You can reroll any scraps and repeat the process until it is all used.

Put the cut out dough back into the fridge for a further 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180ºC / 160ºC fan oven/ gas mark 4 or 350ºF around 15 minutes before you intend to start baking.

Place the cookies in the oven for 8-10 minutes until the dough is firm to the touch and just starting to brown around the edges.You don’t want the cookies to colour more than a little else they will dry too crispy. You can see how pale the finished cookies are above.

Leave to cool on a rack and once fully cool, store in an airtight container.