Christmas Baking

We decided to take the homemade option this year and made lots of yummy things to give as gifts and of course to enjoy ourselves!

Passionfruit Melting Moments
These were lovely but I am slightly discomforted by the little speckles of food colouring that refused to dissolve! You can find the recipe here.

Espresso-Chocolate shortbread
Another successful Dorie recipe. That makes 3 in a row, woo-hoo! These were fabulous. Incredibly easy to make and roll and with a real flavour hit (as long as you like coffee and chocolate and really why would you make or eat these if you didn't??). I only had one little piece as not-yet-born people don't like caffeine.

Fruit Mince Truffles
A variation on a basic truffle recipe (just chocolate, cream and vanilla). You can find the recipe here. We left out the brandy though so I could have some!

Peanut Butter Squares
My all time favourite that I could eat by the truckload! These are Nigella's version of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and they come as close as anything else I've tried. Only annoying thing is that is impossible to slice without the chocolate layer cracking (and I've tried everything from letting it sit out, a hot knife, slicing upside down etc ... all to no avail)

Ingredients for the Base

50g dark brown sugar
1 1/3 cups confectioners' sugar
50g unsalted butter
200g peanut butter

Ingredients for the topping

200g milk chocolate
100g dark chocolate
20g unsalted butter

Using the paddle attachment on a stand mixer (or just a wooden spoon and a bowl), stir all the ingredients for the base together until smooth. You may find that some of the dark brown sugar stays in rubbly but very small, lumps, but don't worry about that. Press the sandy mixture into a 9-inch square brownie pan and make the surface as even as possible. Place in the fridge to firm up. To make the topping, melt the chocolates and butter together and spread over the base. Place in the fridge to set. When hardened, cut into very small squares as it is incredibly rich and more-ish!

Classic Christmas Cake
It's become a tradition that I make this cake, one for us and one for my grandparents. I was actually quite organised this year and managed to not only soak the fruit for a few days but make the cakes 3 weeks ahead of time so they would mature and taste even more amazing. You can find the recipe here. A huge oversight is a lack of spices (?!?!?) so I always add at least 3 teaspoons of mixed spice or whatever takes my fancy.

We turned all these goodies into gift plates to be handed out on Christmas Day. Yummy!

Tuesdays with Dorie: Grandma's All-Occasion Sugar Cookies

Just the name says sweet, cosy comfort food don't you think? I don't really have much experience with sugar cookies. I remember making a few as a child and decorating them garishly but they've never been a big thing in our family.

I was originally planning on cutting shapes from these but after reading how puffy and mishapen they could be I went for the easier slice and bake option.

Again, no problems making, chilling, cutting or cooking these. I love it when things go according to plan!

The taste test ...

Oh. My. God. How can something so simple taste so good?? I only baked 1/4 of the dough and the instant they came out of the oven I was wishing I'd done more. They were sweet without being overpowering, slightly crispy around the edges and a little chewy in the middle. Absolute cookie perfection. I was planning on adding a basic lemon glaze but honestly they didn't need anything. Thank you Dorie's Grandma and Ulrike of Küchenlatein!

Update - I have since made the rest of the batch, sprinkling some with cinnamon sugar after baking, and rolling a log in raw sugar before slicing and baking. Both divine! These have ended up on some Christmas gift plates and been very well received!

Tuesdays with Dorie: Linzer Sables

One bite of these and I was instantly transported! I can't remember where or when I've eaten these but the taste and aroma of these lovely biscuits was incredibly familiar.

I had no issues at all making these. The dough came together easily, rolled out well, cut well and cooked perfectly. I used hazelnut meal and raspberry jam for these but really the possibilities are endless. I ended up using an apple corer to cut out the little holes in the middle because nothing else was the right size!

I made a full batch of the dough but only cooked 3 biscuits, 1 for each of us. The rest of the dough is biding it's time in the freezer, ready to be made into Christmas gifts. I took the advice of others and made sure to roll the dough very thin, so the whole cookie sandwich is probably 1/4 inch.

The taste test ...

Simply fabulous. The hazelnuts and ground cloves gave it a rich, aromatic earthiness which worked perfectly with the raspberry jam. Loved the crunch! I much prefer crunchy biscuits to soft cakey ones any day. I will definitely be making more of these!

Thank you to noskos of Living the Life for this wonderful pick.

Next week: Grandma's All-Occasion Sugar Cookies (which I've already made but will wait to post next Tuesday).

Tuesdays with Dorie: Buttery Jam Cookies

So I made these early for a few reasons. Firstly they were the least likely gifts of all the cookies this month. Secondly, I apparently can't read and thought these were actually supposed to be made this week. Doh!

The making of these cookies heralded the arrival of Summer in Brisbane.

Without really thinking I got the butter out of the fridge about 9pm the night before. I got up to a puddle of oil with a blob of yellow in the middle. Ew. I decided to persevere though as these were destined for a morning tea in just a few short hours so I weighed the blob, made up the amount with extra butter and waited a mere 20 minutes for it to be soft enough.

The dough itself was incredibly soft. I think I can blame that on the weather rather than the recipe, but I'm interested to see what everyone else thinks.

The taste test ...

These were very different from what I expected. 'Buttery' made me think of cookies that are slightly crispy around the edges and soft in the middle. These ended up being very soft and very cakey the whole way through.

My tip ... choose your all time, absolute favourite jam for these because that is where the bulk of the flavour comes from. However just as Dorie says, the jam really does add something to the texture, making them slightly denser and chewier than you would expect.

Because of the cakeyness these are screaming out for add-ins. Next time I make these (and I do foresee a next time!) I would add some toasted almonds to the apricot jam, or use raspberry jam with dark chocolate chips.

My only other issue came from baking these in batches. You can see from the photo that some look smooth and others look textured on top. The smooth ones were the first batch. By the time the tray was cool enough to use again the baking powder was doing its job and 'fluffing up' the mix. I liked the look of batch number 2 better!

Thanks to Heather of Randomosity and the Girl for this pick which of course was supposed to be for next Tuesday, 16th December. It was fun!

Sometime in the next 2 weeks - Linzer Sables and Grandma's All-Occasion Sugar Cookies.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Coming Soon

No TWD this week for me but keep an eye out for the Linzer Sables over the next few weeks! We are planning on making our Christmas presents this year and these gorgeous cookies will be a wonderful addition. I know they are freezable but I would rather make everything fresh closer to the day.

Thanks to Laurie for being so flexible with this month's posting. I plan on making everything but it won't probably won't be in order or on a Tuesday!

And just because this is such a short and boring post, here is a pic of one of our cats... Yes he is sitting in a paper shredder :)