Rudolph Macarons

 I have a window of calm right now to get this post written and published while the kids are busy completing Christmas word-searches (winner gets a chocolate).

I don't know about you, but I find it quite a challenge to keep from going rip-roaring mad keep my equilibrium at this time of year: juggling work, Christmas prep, and kids at home for the holiday. (Thankfully Christmas is at my sister's house this year.  Can I hear a  chorus of Hallelujahs?! )

And the very last thing I want to do is go out to the shopping centres.
So while I could probably have found some cute candies to use for Rudolph's nose, I'd forgotten to look for them on my last outing, and settled for piping noses out of chocolate instead - white chocolate coloured with red powdered food colouring.

The antlers are also piped chocolate, but you could use pretzels as an alternative. (As used here on a Rudolph cupcake.) 

The eyes are drawn on with an edible marker. 

The macarons are chocolate and coffee flavoured, and filled with dark chocolate ganache. 

You can make the separate components ahead of time (macarons freeze well; chocolate keeps well), and assemble the day before your function. 

And it sounds like that is all I have time for... the word search has deteriorated into a fierce competition; I'll have to intercede before there's tears.
Oops - too late....

Aaah, Christmas!

Have a great one!

xxM

Cinnamon & Chocolate Roll-Up Cookies

"Happiness is home-made"...

Happiness is also finding these cute jars again this year!

I used similar ones in 2015 for teacher gifts, laden with Russian teacake cookies.

Time was in shorter supply this year, so I filled these ones with a variety of mini-cookies using cookie dough I already had on hand.

The chocolate dipped mini Christmas trees are a dark-chocolate and ginger flavour, and the cinnamon & chocolate roll-up biscuits are an adaptation of my lightly spiced gingerbread cookies. 

Here's how: 

Cinnamon & Chocolate Roll-up Cookies:

Light Gingerbread Cookie Dough

Recipe by Tea, Cake and Create

125g butter, at room temp. 
150g light brown sugar 
1-2 tsp ground ginger (depending on how "light" gingery you like it!)
1 tsp  ground cinnamon
1 tbs golden syrup
1 XL eggs 
310g flour
1 tsp vanilla extract  

1/4 tsp salt

For sprinkling , mix together the following:

1/2 cup light brown sugar + extra

2 tbs ground cinnamon

1/3 cup finely grated dark chocolate 

1 tsp orange zest (optional) 

Method:

Cream together the butter, sugar, spices and golden syrup. 

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating on low speed. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. 
Add the vanilla. 
Sift in the flour and salt. Mix until just clumping, then form into a ball by hand. 

Place in cling-wrap, and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight. 

Remove from the fridge, and thaw for approximately 1 hour (depending on ambient temperature), until the dough has softened enough to roll out. 

Use half of the dough at a time to make it easier. 

Roll out the dough and trim into a neat rectangle  (approx 3mm thick).

Sprinkle with the sprinkling mix. 

Working from a long edge, carefully roll the dough into a long cylinder. 

Roll the outside of this cylinder in some extra brown sugar. 

Cover with cling-wrap and refrigerate for an hour. 

Slice the chilled dough along the length of the cylinder, into 5-7mm thick rounds. 

  

Lay the individual cookies flat on a baking tray and bake at 180'C for approx 8-10min or until just starting to turn golden brown.  

Allow to cool before moving off the baking tray.

Cool completely before packing away into jars or containers.  

Of course you will have to sample a few before they all go into the jars! 

Happy baking! 

xxM

Wet-on-Wet Snowflake Cookies

Are you ready for another marbled Christmas cookie tutorial? Two in one week?!
Well, I could keep this one until next year, but I'm sure I'll have something else to share by then, so it's now or never!

This idea crept into my mind that I should do an end-of-year cookie for all the kids in my son and daughter's classes at school.
And despite being overwhelmingly pretty busy this past week, once the idea took hold it was impossible to shake.
So I decided on a simple snowflake cookie:

Inspired by a Wilton design

Once they were baked, I thought - uh, oh ... not so simple.
But actually, in the end they were.

The beauty of a scallop-edged snowflake is that outlining them is quite free-form and doesn't need to be precise. (A perfectly round circle is much harder!)

Once outlined, I flooded and did some simple colour-flow / wet-on-wet techniques to finish them off.

Here's a step-by-step guide:

Wet-on-Wet Snowflake Cookies

1. Outline with detail-consistency royal icing. 
2. Flood a thick outline with flood-consistency royal icing in white.
3. Repeat with a thick outline of pale blue. 
4. Then with a deeper blue / aqua.
5. Finish with more white flood-consistency icing in the centre. 
6. Use a cocktail stick or scribe-tool to drag the icing outwards from the centre of the snowflake to the tips of the spokes of the snowflake. 
7. Then pull the icing inwards from the V in between the spokes. 
8. Then end result will be a delicate star-like shape in the centre of the snowflake. 
9. Experiment with different arrangements of colours and different directions of pull.  

They're not perfect, but they do have a natural-looking appeal... and were perfectly-well received!

The cookie dough used was this chocolate and ginger recipe.

Happy decorating!

xxM

Marbled Christmas Bauble Cookie

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without a marbled bauble cookie!
While I was taking pictures for this tutorial, it crossed my mind that it was possibly a bit repetitious of a post I did a year or so ago. But when I looked it up, it was actually a post from back in 2013!
(Find it here: marbled cookie tutorial. ) Four whole years -  high time for another one!
And anyway, this marbled bauble has a slightly different look, inspired by a cookie that caught my eye in a DeAgostini Cake Decorating magazine.

Marbled Bauble Cookie, (Christmas 2017!)

• Outline then flood your ball bauble cookie with red royal icing.
• Pipe lines of white and green in flood-consistency icing. 
• Use a cocktail stick or a scribe tool to drag through the icing in alternating directions - first up, then down as in the pictures below. Try make it symmetrical so that you start and end on an upward pull. 
• Add a few gold dragees while the icing is still wet. 
• (Don't forget to ice that little cap on top!)  
• Leave the cookie to dry completely before packaging. 

My favourite cookie cutter of this set? The Father Christmas face. Don't see it there? That's because I turned it into an owl! 

And of course a plaque - always love a plague for all that versatility it offers. 

Happy decorating!

xxM