Christmas Biscuits
Vanillekipferl these lovey Austrian Christmas biscuits can be made well ahead of time and popped into a jar tied up with Christmas ribbon, or clear cellophane tied up with ribbon a really lovely gift for friends and family alike.
INGREDIENTS
180g butter
70g shelled and ground almonds
50g sugar
2 egg yolks
210 g plain flour
How to make them:
Quickly mix all the ingredients to a short-crust dough and leave it in a cool place for one hour.
Roll out the dough to a thickness of about 1 cm before cutting into small pieces and forming crescent-shaped biscuits.
Place the cookies on an ungreased baking tray and bake at a moderate temperature (200°C) for around ten minutes or until they turn a light brown colour.
Mix icing sugar and vanilla sugar together, then toss the hot cookies in the mix.
Store the biscuits in a sealed tin for several days for them to become crumbly.
Make sure that you hide your Vanillekipferl well, so that nobody can get at them before you can!
Zimtsterne (Cinnamon stars)
Ingredients
2 large egg white
1 tsp lemon juice, plus zest 1 lemon
200g icing sugar, plus extra for dusting
250g ground almond
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
Method
Heat oven to 150C/130C fan/gas 2 and line a large baking tray (or 2 smaller) with baking parchment. Place the egg whites in a large bowl and use an electric mixer to whisk until foamy. Add the lemon juice and whisk again until they hold soft peaks.
Slowly mix in the icing sugar and continue whisking until the mixture is stiff. Remove about a quarter of the meringue mixture and set aside to use for the topping. Put the almonds, cinnamon, ginger and lemon zest in the bowl with the meringue and mix to form a stiff, slightly sticky dough.
To form the stars, put the dough on a piece of baking parchment lightly dusted with icing sugar and dust the top of the dough with sugar, too. Place a second sheet of parchment on top of the dough and roll out to about 0.5cm thick (the dough is a little sticky, so the parchment makes it easier to roll). Peel off the top sheet of parchment and use a 5cm star-shaped cutter to cut out as many cookies as possible. Place them on your prepared baking tray.
Using the reserved meringue mixture, spread a small amount onto the top of each cookie, covering the entire top – you may need to add a few drops of water to make the meringue a little easier to spread. Put the tray in the oven and bake for 12-15 mins until meringue is set but not browned. Allow to cool fully before storing in a sealed container for up to 2 weeks.
Cherry & coconut Florentines
Ingredients
140g light muscovado sugar
100g clear honey
200g salted butter
100g desiccated coconut
140g flaked almonds
300g glacé cherry, sliced
4 tbsp plain flour
250g dark, milk or white chocolate, or a mix
Method
Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Put the sugar, honey and butter in a large pan and gently melt together. When all the sugar has dissolved stir in the coconut, flaked almonds, sliced cherries and flour.
Line a large baking tray with greaseproof paper (about 40 x 30cm), and roughly spread the Florentine mixture out to a thin layer – don’t worry if you have small gaps, it should melt together in the oven. Bake for 10-12 mins until a rich golden colour, then set aside to cool and firm up.
Melt the chocolate(s) all in separate heatproof bowls over gently simmering water. Line a second large tray or board with greaseproof paper and carefully flip the cooled Florentine bake onto it. Peel off the greaseproof paper. Spread the melted chocolate over, if you’re using a few types just leave a gap between each.
Leave aside until set, then stamp out shapes using cookie star cutters - if the cutter is digging into your hands (as the Florentine mix may be a little hard), rest a small plate or pan on top of it and push down on this instead.
Sugar-dusted vanilla thins
Short bread dough
325g plain flour 200g chilled salted butter 125g/4½oz golden caster sugar 2 tsp good-quality vanilla extract 2 large free range egg yolks
icing sugar, for dusting
First make the dough, by Tipping the flour into a food processor. Cut the butter into small pieces and drop them into the bowl, then whizz until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.Add the sugar, vanilla and egg yolks and whizz to a small dough.
With your hands, roll the dough on a lightly floured surface into a sausage shape about 25cm/9in long and 5cm/2½in in diameter. Wrap the roll and chill for at least 1 hour. (The roll can be frozen for up to 6 weeks. To use, remove from the freezer and allow to thaw for one hour at room temperature so that the dough is soft enough to be sliced into biscuits.)
Preheat the oven to 180C/gas 4/fan 160C and lightly grease 2 large baking sheets. Using a sharp knife, cut the dough into slices, each a generous 5mm/¼in thick, then arrange them on the greased baking sheets, spacing the biscuits slightly apart so they have a bit of room to spread as they cook.
Bake for 20 minutes until the biscuits are just turning pale golden around the edges, then transfer to a wire rack to cool. Dust generously with icing sugar. The biscuits will keep fresh for up to one week stored in an airtight tin.
Gingerbread House
And I just have to add the following recipe as I know someone really special that holds a Gingerbread house competition at Christmas with her family and friends, she posts all the finished house on her facebook so that everyone can judge and find the annual Gingerbread house Winner.
Ingredients
1kg plain flour, plus extra for dusting
300g cold butter, diced
2 tbsp mixed spice
2 tbsp ground ginger
1 tbsp bicarbonate of soda
450g light soft brown sugar
3 large egg
225g golden syrup
To assemble & decorate
750g icing sugar
400g preserving or pearl sugar
2 egg white
200g ready-to-roll fondant icing, plus a few ping-pong sized balls, wrapped in cling film, ready for assembling.
MAKE THE DOUGH: Put about half the flour in a food processor with the butter. Whizz until you can’t see any lumps of butter remaining (if you don’t have a food processor, rub the butter into all of the flour with your fingertips, until it resembles fine crumbs). Tip the buttery flour into your largest mixing bowl and mix in the remaining flour, spices and bicarbonate of soda with a pinch of salt. Stir in the sugar.
Whisk the eggs with the golden syrup and stir into the flour mixture with a wooden spoon. Using your hands, knead together into a smooth dough. Use straight away, or chill or freeze until ready to bake.
CUT OUT ALL THE SHAPES: Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Roll out a quarter of the dough at a time on a sheet of baking parchment, to the thickness of 2 x £1 coins. Use a small, sharp knife to cut around the cottage templates (see the 'try' section below to print off the template) – remember that each time you’ll need 2 x ROOF, 2 x END and 2 x SIDE for one cottage. Remove the trimmings and lift the gingerbread, on its parchment, onto baking trays. Re-roll trimmings to cut out all the shapes you need.
BAKE YOUR GINGERBREAD: Bake the gingerbread one tray at a time (so it cooks evenly), on a high shelf in the oven for 8-12 mins, until rich brown and firm to the touch. Give each tray 3-5 mins to cool, then carefully sit the templates back onto the relevant shapes and trim any edges to neaten (step 1, above). Keep these trimmings for nibbles. Use a small knife, or heart-shaped cutters, to cut out any doors and windows you want to have. If you want to fill your cottage with lights, use the end of one of the SIDE templates to cut out a little door in the back END of the cottage.
For a roof like ours, roll out remaining gingerbread to about half the thickness of the walls. Use a 3-4cm cutter to stamp out rounds – to fully cover the roofs, you will need about 75 round biscuit tiles. Bake as above, but for 6-9 mins – as they are thinner, they will bake quicker. Let all the biscuits cool completely.
DECORATE YOUR GINGERBREAD: Sift 250g of the icing sugar into a bowl, dribble in water, stirring in until you have a thick-ish icing. Tip the preserving sugar or pearl sugar into a shallow bowl and get a couple of cooling racks ready. Dip the round roof tile biscuits into the icing, one by one – covering about a quarter of the biscuit in icing (step 2). It looks nice if they’re all a bit higgledy-piggledy. Dip into the preserving sugar to stick, then sit on the cooling racks and leave to dry.
Put the egg whites in a large bowl, sift in the remaining 500g of icing sugar, then stir to make a thick, smooth icing. Spoon a little into a piping bag with a very small nozzle. Spoon half of the rest into a piping bag that has a slightly larger nozzle (or spoon into large food bags and, when ready to ice, snip off the corner to turn into a piping bag). Keep the rest covered in the bowl. Use the small piping bag to pipe any icing decorations you want onto the END that is going to be the front of your cottage. Leave to dry.
START BUILDING: Arrange the wall biscuits as you are going to assemble them. Swap to the big bag of icing with a medium nozzle to pipe generous snakes of icing along the SIDE edges (3) and stick the walls together. Pipe extra icing where the walls join each other on the inside of the cottage, and support the sides using your icing balls (4).
To decorate the roof, scrape any excess icing and sugar from the underside of the roof tiles with a small knife, so they can lie flat. Start at the bottom of one and work along in a row, using the icing in the bowl, spread good-sized blobs of icing on the underside of the top of each tile biscuit to stick (5). Let the bottom row overhang the edge of the ROOF. Continue working up, sticking a row at a time, sitting the row above in the gaps of the row below, so the tiles sit in a diamond pattern rather than straight lines down the ROOF (6). You’ll need to cut some of the tiles on the edges to fit – just use a big sharp knife and be brave (you should have a few spares available in case you have any accidents). Repeat to cover the second ROOF, then leave the completed ROOFS with the half-built cottage for a few hrs at least, or preferably overnight, until set.
When ready, remove the supports from the cottage and stick on the ROOFS (7). This bit can be fiddly, so you may need an extra pair of hands. Shape your icing balls to support the bottoms of the ROOFS. Hold the biscuits on firmly for a few mins until the icing starts to set(8 & 9). Set again for a few hrs, or overnight.
FINISHING TOUCHES: To finish decorating like ours, roll marble-sized balls of the ready-to-roll icing and stick them along the ROOF top – this is perfect for hiding the join. To make the icicles, start with the nozzle at a 90-degree angle to the ROOF and squeeze out a pea-sized blob of icing. Keeping the pressure on, pull the nozzle down and then off – the icing will pull away, leaving a pointy trail. Repeat all around the front of the cottage, covering the gap between the ROOF and roof tiles too, if you like.
If this is all to much I know that Aldi sells the ready to make already cooked only need decorating kits, (or it could be Lidl) confirmation of which one would be gratefully received.