Cake thirty - two Xmas Cookies

Get inspired

Gingerbread cookies or Lebkuchen, as they’re called in Germany, are kind of a family. There’s not only one type. There’s a recipe with cream, and one with molasses instead of honey, you can use butter or margarine and according to the percentage of honey you use the cookies change. Then there’s a variety of delicious cookies which are typical of Xmas time, the ones we call Swedish Sugar Crystal Cookies or  the Starry Night Cookies,  for example.

Gingerbread Cookies (German traditional recipe)

200 g butter or margarine

500 g honey

250 sugar 

2 teaspoons spices (ginger, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon)

15 g cocoa powder

1200 g flour 

1 packet baking powder

a pinch of salt

2 eggs

for procedure see:

http://time-for-cake-making.blogspot.it/2013/01/cake-eighteen-gingerbread-decorations.html

Gingerbread Cookies (with cream)  - this recipe is in cups

2/3 cup whipping cream

1 cup sugar

2/3 cup maple syrup or molasses

11/2 tbs ginger

1/2  ts grated lemon zest

1 tbs baking soda stirred into 2 ts water

3 1/2 flour

Lightly whip the cream. Add the sugar, syrup or molasses, ginger, lemon and soda. Beat for 3 miutes. Add most of the flour, kneading well. Cover and let rest at room temperature overnight. 

Turn dough onto floured surface. Knead until smooth. Roll the dough into a thin sheet on a floured surface. Cut out different shapes with cookie cutters. Decorate with sugar pearls or chocolate grains. Place them on parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake at 180° on the centre oven rack for around 7 minutes.. Let cool on the baking sheets. 

If you use molasses the cookies will be of a darker brown and of a slightly more chewy consistency.

French Gingerbread cookies 

3/4 cup margarine or butter

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup maple syrup or molasses

11/2 tbs ginger

11/2 tbs cinnamom

1 ts baking soda 

1 cup chopped almonds

2 1/2 flour

Beat the butter, sugar and syrup or molasses, until light and fluffy. Gradually add the dry ingredients and almonds. Mix well. Turn dough onto floured surface. Knead until smooth. Divide in half and form thick logs. Wrap each log in plastic and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.

Cut into thin slices with a knife, use heart-shaped cutters to give cookies a nicer look. Place them on baking sheets. Bake at 180° for about 10/12 minutes.

Norwegian Xmas Rings
3 eggs
1 yolk
160 g icing sugar
250 g butter
350 g flour
1 yolk 
crystal sugar
Boil eggs for 10/12 minutes. Cool and peel eggs. Sieve boiled egg yolks and mix with fresh yolk and icing sugar. Soften butter and slowly add butter to mixture. Fold in flour and knead until smooth. Wrap dough in aluminum foil and refrigerate for at least 3 hours. 
Divide dough into walnut sized balls and roll out each piece into about a 10 cm long dough snakes. Lightly scramble egg yolk and use it to stick the two ends of the snake so as to make a ring. Cover rings with yolk and crystal sugar. Place cookies on baking sheets and bake at 190° for about 10/12 minutes.

Swedish Sugar Crystal Cookies

250 g butter

120 g sugar

1 egg

400 g flour

1 ts baking powder

1 egg white

1 pinch salt

1/4 cup crystal sugar

174 cup cinnamon

Cream butter, sugar and egg until light and fluffy. Fold in flour, salt  and baking powder. Mix well. Turn dough onto floured surface and knead until smooth. Wrap dough in aluminium foil and refrigerate for 3 hours.

Divide dough into three parts. (Keep the dough you don’t use in the fridge.). Roll dough into a 3 mm thin sheet on a floured surface. Cut out 6 cm circles and place them on a baking sheet. Slightly mix the egg white and spread on cookies. Cover cookies with sugar and cinnmon. Bake at 180° for about 8/10 minutes.

Starry Night Cookies

300 g flour

150 butter

100 g icing sugar

1 egg

4 tbs apricot jam

chocolate icing

glacé icing (100 g icing sugar - some teaspoons water)

Make a mound of flour on a work surface, add butter, sugar and egg. Knead until smooth. Wrap dough in aluminium foil and refrigerate for 2 hours. Roll dough into a 3 mm sheet and cut out your cookies using cutters in the shape of stars and moon. Place them on baking sheets. Bake at 180° for about 10/12 minutes.

Cool cookies. Divide cookies into two groups. Sandwich the cookies with heated jam. 

Melt chocolate over a bain maire and spread over some of the cookies.  Make some glacé icing by mixing icing sugar and water. Cover the rest of cookies. Decorate with sugar sprinkles.

also visit: http://time-for-a-cake.blogspot.it/2014/01/xmas-cookies-2013.html

Cake nineteen - Father Xmas's House

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There are a few things you should consider before making a biscuit house, time, patience and possibly help. You must also change your point of view: you’re not making a cake, you’re building a house! Yes! You’ll be more like an architect in the first phase and then you need the expertize of a bricklayer to make it stand. If you, for example, don’t use the appropriate materials to stick all the parts together your house will  collapse. 

It’s going to be a real project. You’ll have to design the house starting from its size including all details: windows, doors, roof, a chimney, the garden around, with trees and paths; you’ll have to prepare the stencils of each part of your house; you’’ll have to choose the materials, i.e, what kind of biscuit dough to use for the sinlge parts; you’ll have to make and bake the doughs; to cut all the parts, to build your house and surrounding park and finally to decorate it.

It’ll take quite a long time to see it ready but all your efforts will be rewarded! Consider at least four days from project making to decoration.

Step 1: Design 

A very importatnt step| Decide what your house will look like. Prepare the cardboard templates of the house: walls, roof, and door, choose the cookie cutters for the trees and reindeers and decide the choco decorations for doors and windows.

Here are my templates.

Step2: Dough

I usually make two different doughs, one for the house and one for the decorations. when I want my house to look like a wooden mountain chalet. The dough I use for the house is made with a lot of honey which gives the structure the look and strength of real wood while the gingerbread dough is good for the trees and the decorations.

Honey-based dough (for the house)

1 kilo honey

1/4 l water

1,250 g flour

200 g candied orange and citrus 

40 g cinnamon, ginger, muskat nutmeg

30 g baking soda

Combine the honey and water in a saucepan and heat to boiling, stirring continuously. Let cool. Put the flour and the candied fruit on a pastry board, make a hole in the middle, pour the honey mixture and knead well. Add the baking soda and knead until smooth. Cover and let rest at room temparature for one or two days. 

Gingerbread dough (for the decorations)

100 g butter

250 g honey 

250 g sugar

1 tsp ginger

1tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp pepper

1 tsp cocoa powder

500 g flour 

1/2 packet baking powder

one pinch of salt

2 eggs

Combine the butter, honey, sugar, spices and cocoa in a saucepan, and heat to boiling, stirring continuously.. Let cool. Add the flour mixed with the baking powder,, the salt and the eggs. Stir with a wooden spoon at first then pour the mixture onto a floured surface and knead well. Wrap in aluminium foil and let rest overnight. 

also visit: 
http://time-for-a-cake.blogspot.it/2013/01/cake-nineteen.html

Cake eighteen - Gingerbread decorations

Get inspired

I’m sure you’ll find more than one recipe for gingerbread cookies, but all in all they’re more or less the same: some use golden syrup, others honey or treacle. Most of them must be prepared a day ahead and rest for the night. I’ve also found one recipe though which can be made in one day. Anyway, this is my favourite one and it’s the German recipe for "Lebkuchen" - Gingerbread cookies in German. 

200 g butter

500 g honey

250 sugar 

2 teaspoons spices (ginger, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon)

15 g cocoa powder

1200 g flour 

1 packet baking powder

a pinch of salt

2 eggs

Combine butter, honey, sugar, spices and cocoa powder in a saucepan and heat to boiling. Let cool. Add flour, baking powder

and eggs to the honey mixture. Mix well using a wooden spoon and then turn the dough into a foloured surface and kenad well. Shape the dough into a ball, wrap it tightly in aluminum foil and cover it with a bowl. Let rest at room temperature overnight.

Turn dough onto floured surface. Knead until smooth. Roll the dough into a thin sheet and cut out different shapes with cookie cutters. Place then on parchment paper-lined baking sheets and bake for around 8 min. 

Let cool on the baking sheets. 

Simple icing 

125 g icing sugar

food colours to your taste

 2 teaspoons water

Mix sugar and water well, then add some drops of colour until you reach the shade you want.

Have fun!
Also visit:
http://time-for-a-cake.blogspot.it/2013/01/cake-eighteen.html