Category: Christmas

Annual Christmas Cookie Decor 2018 – Recap

I think I can now officially close the season of Christmas cookie decor. I still need to bake two cakes (I’ll do that a day before Christmas though, they have to be fresh!), but when it comes to cookies – which can be baked and decorated in advance – they’re all done and dusted. I thought I’d share a recap of all my Christmas cookies from this year. Well, maybe not all – I made hundreds of gingerbread cookies – but I have photos of all types of toppings I used. This will be lovely to return to in a few months, to reminisce Christmas time.

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Festive Gingerbread Spiced Mug Cake

Staying in the Christmas spirit – it’s time for a simple recipe for those who don’t have much time but want to get in the festive spirit through festive food.

A simple gingerbread mug cake! Ready in under 5 minutes.

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How To Have A Healthy Christmas

Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas, everyone! I believe we can all agree that Christmas season is very much here, officially. And although there’s nothing wrong in eating all of the delicious festive food every once in a while, I know for a fact that those trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle on a daily basis might find it difficult to keep the right balance around holidays. Here are a few ways to minimize the bad effects of a Christmas feast. Which, by the way, isn’t as bad as you might assume! I’ve recently posted about 5 real health benefits of Christmas food – make sure to check it out in case you’ve missed it!

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Simple Cut Out Ground Walnut Cookies

These cookies are a perfect alternative for traditional gingerbread ones, if you’re bored with those. They are also great to use with cookie cutters – they hold their shapes perfectly, better than the best of sugar cookie recipes I’ve tried. Extremely delicate and soft, they just dissolve in your mouth. And the taste is simply divine! It will surely please all walnut lovers, I can guarantee that. 🙂

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Christstollen – Traditional German Christmas Cake

This cake is the epitome of Christmas. The raisins, candied orange peel, the rum and marzipan… Could we possibly get any more Christmassy than this?

Although I’m not German, this cake is always present in our house at Christmas. We first discovered it in German chain stores (namely Lidl, I believe). My dad fell in love with it, and I made a resolution to find a good recipe and bake the cake at home (which is always better than store-bought cakes with who-knows-what inside).

A few years have passed, I’ve been baking this cake once a year, for Christmas, and I believe I now have a recipe good enough to share, with all adjustments made over the past years.

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DIY Piping Cones

Christmas season, for me, is filled with baking and decorating cookies. And I’m sure I’m not the only one! Through the years, I’ve experimented with so many different piping tools… From regular plastic sandwich bags, through plastic store-bought piping cones with and without nozzles, fabric cones, even special icing pens. And always, always, something was wrong. Having to clean a multiple-use bag was a nightmare when I only had one and wanted to do various icing types and colours in one afternoon. Nozzles were too small or too big. Plastic bags would break open and I’d be left with a sugar-coated catastrophe…

And then one day, I came across this simple method for making your own piping cones out of baking/parchment paper. And dear God, what a life changing discovery that was. I did all of my Christmas cookie decor with these cones with zero accidental splash out disasters. I always had as many fresh cones at hand as I wanted to. And those dozens of cones cost me a grand total of… £1, perhaps? I don’t think I’m ever going to return to other methods, not when it comes to simple cookie decor with royal icing or chocolate at least.

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How to Make and Work with Royal Icing

I’ve recently posted an extensive guide for working with chocolate. Now, it’s time to have a look at another popular cookie decor medium – royal icing. In this guide, I will show you how to prepare royal icing, how to adjust its consistency, how to use it for cookie decor and also how to prepare little decorations in advance, to use them on cookies at a later time. So, without further ado, let’s get cracking!

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7 DIY Christmas Gift Tag Ideas – Quilling

After the wave of recipes and food related posts, time to return to some DIY. I believe we have the majority of our gifts purchased already, and that means… wrapping time! And isn’t it nice to make our gift wrapping a bit more personalized? We can achieve that by making cute little personalized Christmas gift tags ourselves!

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Simple Almond Crescent Cookies

These cookies are what Christmas tastes like, for me. Although they’re incredibly simple to make, we only have them once a year – for Christmas. And that might be the reason why I love them so much and never get bored with them. I always have to wait a whole year to have them again. But they’re certainly worth the wait! Any almond lovers out there? I guarantee you’re going to love these too!

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Tangerine Cookies with Coconut – New Taste of Christmas

Always give credit when it’s due – and this time, it goes to the great Tesco themselves. I found this recipe on their website (it’s gone now) and decided I had to give it a go with only a few adjustments. The cookies turned out even better than expected! It’s not the taste of my Christmas yet – I made them for the first time this year – but I have a feeling they will return to my house next Christmas. I’m sure you could replace tangerines with oranges in this recipe – that’s what I plan to try out next time. Lemons should work as well, provided that you sprinkle them with a truly generous amount of sugar, to break the sourness!

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