Snowman Biscuits... and Merry Christmas!!

This year passed in a blink!... and it seems to me that each year is passing even faster than the previous one...isn't that crazy?. In the last days I have said to myself: "I'm not going to do anything today, I'll just relax" but it doesn't really work!, there's always something and there I am again, jumping here and there...
We moved to a beautiful town last December. It was the sort of change I was really looking forward to. Miraculously we sold our previous house in 4 weeks and in the meantime we found the perfect one for us, well located, already empty, in great condition and next to our son's school. It was all meant to be!. I feel so happy here!.
Change didn't stop there, I began to study clinical hypnosis in September and I LOVE IT!. A great new window has been opened for me and I feel very grateful for that.

But let's go to the biscuits now...

I wasn't sure if I would have the time to do Christmas biscuits this year, too much going on! But I managed to find a bit of time and here they are!.

I had very little time to decorate them, but lots of fun!.
The recipe as follows:

For the biscuits:

Ingredients:
-5 cups all-purpose flour
-2 teaspoons ground ginger
-1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
-1 teaspoon ground cloves
-1/2 teaspoon baking soda
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-zest of one orange (optional)
-1 cup (250gr) unsalted butter, softened
-1 cup sugar
-1 large egg
-1 cup molasses (chancaca in Chile)

Method:
1. Whisk together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, baking soda, salt, and orange zest (if you're using it) in a medium bowl.

2. Cream together the butter and sugar with your mixer until light and fluffy. Add the egg and molasses and mix until well blended.

3. With the mixer on low, gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture until the two are thoroughly blended.

4. Turn dough onto a work surface and divide into three equal portions. Form each one into a rough disk. Now you're ready to roll, chill, and cut out cookie shapes.

5. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C)

6. After you've rolled and cut the dough and the cookies are on parchment-lined cookie sheets , bake them on the middle rack of your oven for 12-16 minutes or until the cookies start to turn a deeper brown around the edges.

7. Cool the cookies completely before decorating.

*This recipe was taken from the book "Cookie Craft"*

I'm very sorry to say I don't have a tutorial for the decoration!!! I promise to give you one the next time.

Wishing you all a very
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
Let's count our blessings and be thankful for all of them.

"Deep at the center of my being there is an infinite well of gratitude. I now allow this gratitude to fill my heart, my body, my mind, my consciousness, my very being. This gratitude radiates out from me in all directions, touching everything in my world, and returns to me as more to be grateful for. The more gratitude I feel, the more I am aware that the supply is endless."
(Louise L. Hay)

Lúcuma pretzels....delicious!!

I recently bought powder lúcuma as its one of the 2 fruits I really miss from Chile (the other one is Chirimoya). I was very excited to try it in a recipe and here I am!. After making the successful chocolate pretzels from a previous post, I decided to do my very own variation with lúcuma....and let me tell you something, I like this one even better than the chocolate one!!...too good to be true? give it a go!:

Ingredients:
-100g or a generous 1/3 cup of unsalted butter.
-100g or 7 tbsp caster (superfine) sugar.
-1 egg
-200g of plain (all-purpose) flour.
-50g of lúcuma powder.

To decorate:
-Icing sugar

1. Lightly grease a baking tray or line with baking paper.
Beat together the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg.

2. Sift together the flour and Lucuma powder and gradually beat in to form a soft dough.
Use your fingers to incorporate the last of the flour and bring the dough together. Make a ball, wrap with cling film and put in the fridge for 15 minutes.


3. Break pieces from the dough and roll into thin sausage shapes about 10cm/4 inches long and 6mm thick. Twist into pretzel shapes by making a circle, then twist the ends through each other to form a letter "B".

4. Place on the prepared baking tray, slightly spaced apart to allow for spreading during cooking.


5. Bake in a preheated oven, 190C/375F/Gas mark 5, for 8-12 minutes (not more or they'll probably burn).
The smell coming from the oven is just incredible.... and believe me, all your neighbours will be queuing up outside your door :-)
Leave the pretzels to cool slightly on the baking tray, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.


Sprinkle them with icing sugar, instead you can mix icing sugar and lúcuma powder to sprinkle your pretzels.

To store them, simply put them in an air tight container, a tin box is ideal.


I didn't want to dip them in chocolate like the choc pretzels I did before, simply because the lúcuma flavour is woth enjoying just the way it is, although nobody says you can't use chocolate!.

ENJOY! x

Chocolate Pretzels

I like to bake, you know...but when its cold and rainy like today, I like it even more... so I grabbed one of my books, "Super Cookery, Chocolate & Baking" to look for a yummy treat... page 174 had it! "Chocolate pretzels", I saw this page many times before and thought they would be ideal for a birthday party, but not necessarily! they can also be a treat for your kids when they come back from school, or to have accompanied by a coffee with your friends.
As soon as I came back from dropping my little man at nursery, I put my apron on, rolled up my sleeves, tuned in to BBC Radio 2 and action begun.

The recipe as follows:
Ingredients:
-100g or a generous 1/3 cup of unsalted butter.
-100g or 7 tbsp caster (superfine) sugar.
-1 egg
-225g or 2 cups of plain (all-purpose) flour.
-25g or 1/4 cup of cocoa powder

To decorate:
-15g or 1tbsp of butter
-100g dark or milk chocolate to melt
-Icing sugar to dust or sugar sprinkles

1. Lightly grease a baking tray or line with baking paper.
Beat together the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg.

2. Sift together the flour and cocoa powder and gradually beat in to form a soft dough.
Use your fingers to incorporate the last of the flour and bring the dough together. Make a ball, wrap with cling film and put in the fridge for 15 minutes.
3. Break pieces from the dough and roll into thin sausage shapes about 10cm/4 inches long and 6mm thick. Twist into pretzel shapes by making a circle, then twist the ends through each other to form a letter "B".


4. Place on the prepared baking tray, slightly spaced apart to allow for spreading during cooking.


5. Bake in a preheated oven, 190C/375F/Gas mark 5, for 8-12 minutes.
Leave the pretzels to cool slightly on the baking tray, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.


6. Melt the butter and chocolate in a bowl set over a pan of gently simmering water, stirring to combine.

7. Dip half of each pretzel into the chocolate and allow the excess of chocolate to drip back into the bowl. Place the pretzels on a sheet of grese proof paper or baking paper and leave to set. (If you want to use sprinkles, do it now before the chocolate sets).

8. When set, dust the non-chocolate coated side of each pretzel with icing (confectioners) sugar before serving.

These delicious pretzels are ideal for birthday parties, picnics... ideal with a coffee or glass of milk!. I made them for my son, when he comes back from nursery, but the friends coming over also get the benefit :-)

Christmas biscuits

I know should have posted this a bit before Christmas!!
Anyway....here are the biscuits I made :o)

Halloween biscuits....Boo!

Halloween is one of those celebrations that mean very little to me, it doesn't really inspire me nor excites me.
I saw in my "Cookie craft" book an idea of a halloween house using boiled candies for the windows that really looked cool, so I got some candies and I tried to do something different myself. At the beginning I was just going to make some circles with candy in the center and some royal icing, but as I was cutting circles I saw a little face taking shape... and I loved it.

Then with an oval cutter I cut more cookies using the orange dough, cut some letters using the green dough and put them together as you see in the following picture, I added candy inside the letters to make them look a bit bloody:


When I had them all ready, I put them in clear bags with orange and black ribbon, they looked great!.

Watermelon biscuits

One of my friends, who feeds my passion for English pottery, came to visit me with some nice tea cups and saucers the other day, I thought she was selling them to me, but she asked me if she could exchange them for some cookies as she had a gathering coming on....sure!.
I made these watermelon cookies, put them in clear bags and attached a nice label to promote my "sweet art".

They were very tasty and as my friend said afterwards....a complete success! :o)

Cookies with a WOW factor

I was waiting for another excuse to bake more cookies. There was a birthday coming for someone very special in the family. I showed her all the cookie cutters I had and asked her to choose her favourites. I'm very glad that among them, she picked the ice cream one as I was dying to decorate it!, here's the result.

I had around 3 dozens of cookies to decorate and it took me 5 hours, I loved every single minute of it! yaaaaay!!!!.
I prepared a nice box for her and gave her a dozen of cookies. Then I put others in cute clear bags to give to the other members of the family and friends who went to the party.


These are the other ones I made:

Boats and chicks...

And these cute pigs....OINK!

I used the chocolate roll out cookies recipe that appears in the "Cookie Craft" book and also the royal icing recipe which is really good.

These cookies definately had the WOW factor :o)

Blue cheese biscuits - Happy father's day!

My husband loves blue cheese so these biscuits + a good bottle of red wine make the perfect present for the perfect daddy :o)
I imagine these make a very good appetizer as well.

I got the recipe from Delicious Magazine:

Ingredients
150g Danish blue cheese, roughly chopped
100g softened unsalted butter, roughly chopped
1 medium egg yolk
100g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
75g quick-cook polenta
1 tsp poppy seeds

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 200°C/fan180°C/gas 6. Line 2 baking sheets with baking paper. In a bowl, mash the cheese with a fork. Add the butter and egg yolk and mix together. Sift over the flour, add the polenta and mix into a stiff dough. Shape into a ball, flatten slightly, wrap in cling film and pop into the freezer for 15 minutes to chill.

2. Dust a work surface with a little flour. Roll out the cheese dough to a 5mm thickness. Using a 5cm star-shaped cutter, cut out biscuits and put onto the baking sheets. Re-roll the trimmings to cut out more biscuits, making 30 in total. Sprinkle the biscuits with poppy seeds, pressing them in lightly so they stick. Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Maybe you'd like to know that, by the time the biscuits are in the oven, your kitchen will be impregnated with a rancid cheesy smell....opening the windows might help!!!

3. Gift-wrap with a card or label explaining to store in an airtight box and eat within a week.

Nutritional info
Per biscuit: 66kcals, 4.6g fat (2.7g saturated), 1.7g protein, 4.7g carbs, 0.1g sugar, 0.2g salt