It’s starting to look a lot like Christmas – Christmas Series – Cookies and Cakes recipes

When I was little, I loved the grandmother bake Christmas cookies and biscuits. At our house, Christmas meant baking many (really many) types of cakes and cookies. In addition to the traditional paws, jam cookies, bajaders, and other desserts typical of the Christmas holidays, we introduced something new every year, and when Christmas baking was mostly taken over by me, I tried to keep newest ones on the Christmas cake tray each year.

Enjoy the holidays!

1. NUTELLA CRINKLES

Ingredients:

• 220g flour
• a bit of salt
• half a teaspoon of baking powder
• 200g Nutella
• 2 tablespoons softened butter
• 100g of sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1 vanilla sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 100g fried hazelnuts
• powdered sugar

Preparation:

• Mix flour, baking powder and a pinch of salt.
• In another bowl, whisk the Nutella and butter with a blender, then add the sugar and mix for at least two minutes. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until combined. After that, add the flour mixture alternately and mix with a milk and a large spoon. Finally, gently stir in the crushed hazelnuts.
• Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
• Preheat the oven to 180 ° C.
• Using a spoon, shape the balls and roll them into the powdered sugar that we poured onto the smaller saucer. Lay them on a sheet with baking paper a few cm away and bake max. 10 minutes, ie until they burst. When removed, they will be very fragile so do not touch them until they are cool.

2. Rudolph Gingerbread Biscuits

Rudolph Gingerbread Biscuits

Ingredients:

• 180 g of cold butter
• 200 g powdered sugar
• 350 g flour
• 1 large egg
• 1 egg yolk
• a pinch of salt
• 15 g speculaas/gingerbread spice mix

Preparation:

• Mix all the ingredients in a big bowl. ‘Mix’ in the dough in a blender or with a mixer until the dough starts to shape in a ball and doesn’t stick to the bowl anymore.
• Take out the ball of dough onto cling film and shape it into a disk
• Leave in the fridge for half an hour.
• Preheat the oven to 180°C and put baking paper on two bigger baking trays.
• Slice the dough in half and roll out both pieces to 3 mm thickness on a slightly floured surface.
• Cut out the biscuits about 7 cm in diameter, or with a round glass.
• Put the biscuits onto the tray and bake for 10-12 minutes or until they turn slightly brown.
• Take out on a cooling rack and cool down.

Decorations:

• 50 g of dark chocolate
• red candy (M&M’s, Skittles…)
• sugar glaze
• Melt the dark chocolate in a ban marie, and don’t let the bottom of the pan touch the boiling water.
• Pour the chocolate into a cone bag and cut the tip off. Be careful not to cut off too much. Start smaller, and then go big if you’d like
• Draw on the antlers and the eyes with the chocolate, and if you want, you can put a dab of chocolate and use it as nose glue.
• I stuck on the nose with sugar glaze
• Dip the candy into the sugar glaze and stick it onto the biscuits. Leave to try, and then transfer into cellophane, wrapping it up with a bow. Give it as a gift to a dear person or pack them up in a tin box for your household.
• Note: they disappear faster than you can say ‘biscuit’. 😉

3. Christmas chocolate cake

Ingredients:

1. Carob biscuit:

• 200 g of cooking chocolate
• 200 g butter
• 8 eggs
• 150 g sugar
• 150 g of ground carob
• 1 grated orange peel
• orange juice

2. Coating:

• 4 tablespoons of cherry jam
• 2 tablespoons of rum

3. Chocolate Glaze:

• 100 g of chocolate for cooking
• 100 ml of sweet cream

Preparation:

• Melt the chocolate and butter over low heat and leave to cool for a while.
• Mix the eggs with sugar to obtain a thick, light mixture and mix the melted chocolate and butter.
• Add the juice and orange peel, then the carob. Sift the croissant and break any lumps with your fingers. Mix everything with the kettle to get a smooth, lump-free mixture.
• Pour the mixture into a cake pan (26 cm) covered with greasy paper. Bake the cake for about 25 minutes at 170 ° C.
• Blend cherry marmalade with rum, heat over low heat and coat the cooled cake.
• Melt chocolate and sweet cream over low heat and coat the cake with chocolate icing.
• Garnish as desired and serve alone or with a little whipped, sweet cream.

Sweet tip: For coating, instead of cherry jam, you can use apricot jam or orange jam, and you can replace rum with orange juice.