• Make your orange cinnamon pastry. Cut the butter into small chunks and allow it to soften slightly. Sieve in the flour and cinnamon into a bowl.
• Sieve the sugar into a separate large mixing bowl and add the softened butter. Cream them together with an electric whisk or stiff spatula until fully incorporated.
• Cut the flour/cinnamon into the creamed butter and sugar mixture using a spatula, until it resembles ground almonds with no big lumps of butter. Stir through the orange zest. 
• Mix the egg yolk and water together and add it slowly to the mixture until it comes together into a soft, and just slightly sticky dough. You may not need all of it.
• Turn out the cinnamon orange pastry onto a piece of cling film/food wrap, flatten it out into a disc about one or two inches thick, wrap it up and rest the pastry in the fridge for one hour.
• Turn out the sweet shortcrust pastry dough onto a surface dusted with a little flour. Roll it out into a circle, taking care to turn it over and move it around a few times so it does not stick to the work surface.
• Once you have a round piece of pastry 5 millimetres thick, use your cookie cutters to cut shapes, and move them onto a lined cookie sheet or low sided baking tray.
• Rest the Christmas cookies in the fridge for 20 minutes, and preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius / 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Bake the pastry cookies in the oven for 10 minutes or until golden brown at the edges and leave to cool.

Orange buttercream frosting

• Cut the unsalted butter into small chunks and allow it to soften in a mixing bowl with the orange zest.
• Gradually sieve in the powdered sugar to the butter and orange zest and use an electric whisk to cream them together until you have a smooth and fluffy buttercream frosting.
• Add the buttercream frosting to a piping bag with a piping nozzle. I used a flower piping nozzle in size 108.

Orange cookie icing

• Sieve the powdered sugar and then stir in the orange juice and boiling water until you reach the desired consistency. Add to a piping bag or dip the cookies into the icing to coat them entirely.