More Belated Christmas Cookies

So, on the day that I made my Christmas Gingerbread Cookies I also made a huuuge batch of my absolute favourite type of cookies.

I made these delicious peanut and chocolate chip biscuits which were really so easy. It's basically a very basic recipe for butter cookies with a huge amount of chocolate and peanuts added in, but I have finally found the perfect basis (like the butter biscuit recipe) to make these. I cut them into christmas-sy shapes but they are not really specific to christmas at all, so you could just roll them into little balls and squish them lightly with a fork or use any other types of cookie-cutters.

1) Start by sifting all the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. These will include: 560ml (2 and a quarter cups) of cake flour and 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda).

2) In a separate mixing bowl, cream together 155g of very soft 

 butter, 175ml of muscovado (soft brown) sugar and 60ml of normal white sugar with a spatula. Whisk in 2 eggs and 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence.

3) Now add the wet ingredients (the egg, butter and sugar mixture) to the dry ingredients. Blend until a relatively thick dough is formed. 

4) Chop up very roughly (so in quite big chunks) 250g of milk chocolate and 140g of white chocolate. Add the roughly chopped chocolate into the dough as well as 150g of peanuts. Use your hands to mix them into the dough, to form a thick, chunky ball of dough. The chocolate and peanuts will look like they're far exceeding the amount of dough, but use your discretion, the mixture is meant to be very chunky. 

5) Now roll out the dough over a lightly floured surface. Note that this will seem pretty hard to roll out because of all the nuts and chocolate, but it will work. And cut them into the shapes you want with cookie-cutters. 

6) Place your cookies onto a greased baking tray, or a Silpat over a baking tray and cook them at 180 degrees Celsius (350F) for 8-10 mins. They burn easily so make sure to watch them and take them out when they're quite firm and golden. Let them cool for a few minutes and there you go. Delicious :) 

I hope you enjoy my chocolate chip and peanut cookies! 

Christmas Gingerbread Cookies

Happy new year everyone!

So I was really hoping to post this before Christmas because I actually baked these cute little gingerbread men (and some other stuff) a few days before Christmas eve to get into the festive mood, but for some reason the drive on my laptop to read my camera's memory stick has stopped working, so I had some trouble. But all is set now, so here we go...

So I baked these gingerbread men, recipe courtesy of Zoella- and they were so cute that I had to share them and the recipe with you.

Here's what you'll need:

So, what to do:

1) In a pot on the hob (medium heat) add 75g of light brown sugar, 2 heaped tablespoons of golden syrup (this is often called corn syrup in the U.S I think?), 1 heaped tablespoon of black treacle (molasses), 1 tablespoon of water and stir with a wooden spoon while they melt.

2) After a few minutes stir in the spices: 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon and 1 teaspoon of ground ginger (you can add more or less depending on how gingery you like them). 

3) To the mixture in the pot, add 95g of butter at room temperature and gradually stir it in, having turned down the heat to low, until it is completely combined and melted in. 

4) Turn off the stove. Add half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and stir till it lightens slightly in colour. 

5) Sift in 225g of cake flour and mix it up until it forms a ball of thick dough, add more or less flour to it so that the dough is neither too sticky nor too dry. Cover the dough lightly in cling wrap plastic and put it aside to cool for 30 mins. While you wait, preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius (350 F).

6) After the dough has finished resting, sprinkle a surface lightly with flour and roll out the dough thinly with a rolling pin. 

7) Now I just went to town with cutting all the different shapes I liked. Use cookie cutters (I used gingerbread men and dove shapes) to cut out the cookies and keep doing this and then rerolling out the dough till it is all used up. Place your cookie cut-outs on a Silpat or wax paper on top of a baking tray (you could also just grease it with Spray 'n Cook). Cook them for 8-15 minutes, check that they're firm when you take them out, but if you poke too hard, obviously you will squish them. Let them cool completely. 

8) Once they've cooled, you can ice them how you'd like. I used ready-to-roll fondant in christmas colours. Roll the fondant out until it is very thin, and cut out shapes using the same cookie cutters. 

9) Mix half a cup of icing sugar with 3 tablespoons of water to form a thick paste to act as 'glue' (add more icing sugar if it is too watery). Spread this on the back of the fondant and put it face-down onto the cookie so that they fit together. 

And taaah daaaah :D I had so much fun making these and they really are so easy and very festive. Hope you enjoyed this post as much as I did making it.