Dusty, I made these yesterday and they turned out pretty good. I'm not a baker either, and I don't have any of that fancy stuff to bake with, just an oven and some elbow grease here and it worked a treat!!

Plain bickies:

125g butter, cubed
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 egg
1/4 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup plain flour
1 cup self raising flour

Pre heat oven to 160 degrees. Line two baking trays with baking paper (I only have one, so did two batches) Beat together the sugar and egg until creamy (takes alot of effort doing it by hand!). Fold in the all of the flour, sifted, to form a soft dough.
Turn the dough out onto some baking paper and cover with another sheet. Roll dough out to about 5mm thickness (I used a can of spray oil as I don't have a rolling pin... ). Using cookie cutters, cut the shapes you want and place on the trays.
Bake for 10-15 mins or until lightly golden. Cool on a wire rack.

*I also added a handful each of milk and white choc bits.

You can ice them of fill them if you want, here's some ideas.

Lemon Butter filling
Beat together 60g of soft butter and 1 cup of icing sugar until smooth. Add finely grated rind of 1/2 a lemon and 1-2 tsp of juice. Beat until spreadable


Vanilla Icing

Mix 1 1/4 cups of sifted icing sugar with 1 tbsp soft butter. Add 1/2 tsp of vanilla essence and 2tbsp of boiling water. Mix until smooth.

Choc fleck icing
Make vanilla icing as above and add 2tbsp of finely grated dark chocolate.

I hope you enjoy....