Gingerbread Cookie Tree

You know Christmas is coming when you start planning gingerbread structures, I will be making a house of course but first I thought I'd try something different - a cookie tree!

I've seen a lot of these over the last couple of years and have been dying to make one so was super excited to see a set in The Works for only £2.99, a set made up of a set of star cutters, hole cutter and two different height stands depending on how tall you want it.

Using the recipe below we made up about 4-8 of each size of star to get it as tall as possible, cutting a hole in each one before baking. Once baked I set them aside for icing, I made up a huge batch of green royal icing for piping and filled a huge icing bag up.

I iced each star with green, stacking more on top and it soon filled up the biggest stand. I kept aside a star for the top and painted it with gold edible paint and dusted it in cake glitter. For tree decorations I added sugar snowflakes, purple coated chocolates, mini candy canes and even more red and gold glitter...you can never really have enough anyway!

I have to say I was surprisingly pleased with how it turned out as I wasn't really sure what I was going to be doing with in on the decoration side, I seem to do my best stuff when winging it. We had a little bake off at work for Christmas and it fitted very nicely into the festive theme...keep posted for the gingerbread house I'm decorating tomorrow!

Gingerbread Recipe:


250g butter
125 golden syrup
150ml double cream
250g icing sugar
400g plain flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground gloves
1/2 tsp pepper

You need to add more spices to taste.

Heat butter, golden syrup, double cream and icing sugar in a saucepan. Leave the mixture to cool and stir in the rest of the ingredients. Knead the dough well and roll out, cut out star shaped pieces, make the holes and bake on 175 degrees (165 fan) for 10-12 min. Pin It Now!

Silicone Crazy at Sew White!

Now we all know I love online shopping...especially for bakeware. So when I saw that the Christmas range on Sew White was out, well, I got a little carried away. I regret nothing!

Being obsessed with the Great British Bake Off I had kept my beady eye on the site for when the Teacake Moulds came back in stock, my day finally came and I couldn't have been happier to snap up a pink mould. The thought of making them is terrifying, but in a good way you know? I'm thinking I could decorate them like Christmas pudding for the festive season or maybe even edible snowballs? The list is endless to be honest so I know I'll get lots of use out of them.  £6.00.

I'm really into the whole Christmas desserts this year and have so many ideas, so I couldn't resist this Mini Victoria Sponge Cake Mould, "Each cake mould is approximately 7cm in diameter at the larger part and 5.5cm in diameter at the smaller end and is 5cm tall." I love that all of their moulds are oven and freezer safe, I'm thinking maybe some moist chocolate cakes or maybe even some ice cream, what do you think? £8.00.

This year I really want to make all of my own advent chocolates to put in calendars so this Christmas Shapes Mould would be perfect. I love that there are different shapes so you don't need to make 6 batches of chocolates to get enough different shapes. I especially like the stockings and candy canes...they may not quite reach the calendars... £3.99.

Now for the really Christmassy moulds, just look at them! I bought 1 x reindeer mould, 1 x penguin mould and also a Christmas pudding mould. Again these will make brilliant chocolates, I'm all about the chocolate at the moment I won't lie to you. I'm also going to try out some gingerbread decorations in them which would be great to hang on the tree...or just scoff while watching Love Actually...probably the latter if I'm honest. You can buy them for £4.99 each or £14.99 for a set of four which also includes the angel mould. I bought mine in two stints so should have just waited and bought the whole set but you live and learn, I don't care - they're still cute!

My final item is the Snowflake Plunger Set, I LOVE snowflakes, they might be my favourite symbol of Christmas..I just LOVE them, OK, craziness over. I'd love to decorate a Christmas cake, cupcakes or cake pops with sparkly fondant snowflakes, and I love plungers as it can be ridiculously difficult to cut snowflakes from cutters as they often get stuck. £5.50 for a set of 3.

I will soon be testing these out so keep posted for some reviews!

Nom! Pin It Now!

Gingerbread House Failure!

I know we don't like to show them off too often, but cake fails are important to remember, they happen to all of us and can often be quite funny. I do need to make a whole post dedicated to them because sometimes, things just go wrong.

Last year I made the gingerbread house below. I loved it, we make one every year and was looking forward to getting more creative with one this year, stain-glass windows, maybe a porch...that sort of thing. With last year's one I even made the board a little festive with sifted icing sugar and chocolate Matchsticks with a dollop of icing on top for effect.

The one I tried to make is slightly different...basically it fell apart! We tried to all of the gingerbread in a bit of a rush and it shows, some bits were too soft, some too brittle...a shambles basically which is odd as we've never failed at one before. The stain-glass windows were brilliant, made with smashed up Fox's Glacier Mints...but the fruit ones. I used heart cut out windows as I thought that would be cute and stole the idea of framing them with mini candy candy canes from a fellow blogger. I even cut a whole out the back of one of the sides so I could slip in a tea light to shine through the 'glass'. As you can see I usually prop them up until dry with whatever household objects I can find that fit.

I covered the roof in giant Milkybar buttons to look like tiles, this look amazing...but was pretty heavy! This didn't help really when it came to it. Soft gingerbread + heavy chocolate = destruction. It actually stood completely fine until I came to finishing the decoration, I could have decorated the sides first but wasn't really sure how I wanted to do it so I'm glad I didn't waste any time doing that! :).  So I went to move it to a different table, that's when I notices it started to sink....this is when I went to support it only to realise that there was no way at all I could save it, for as soon  as I were to let go it would slowly die....and it did. In the end I just had to let it happen, I was annoyed I have to admit, but as we're away all of Christmas I suppose it doesn't matter, alas it just wasn't meant to be.

But there is a sliver lining, I said how much I hated that the edges of my gingerbread house never end up completely straight and wished you could get cutters. Of course Norway is the land of gingerbread and we were my second cousin's house today where she happened to have two sets! So I got given them both, heaven! I will give it another go, Christmas or not I shall find a reason, so stand by for gingerbread house take 2. Pin It Now!

Gingerbread Baubles

Sorry I've left it a while posting..I've been sick! I've been ill one other time this year which must be a record for me, so I've been feeling quite sorry for myself and even had to leave work in a taxi as I was feeling so bad!! After dying in bed for a day and a half I finally managed to drag myself out of bed to help my mum put up the Christmas decorations. For the last couple of years now we've been having a real tree at home which I love, I know they're a little pricey but I think it's worth it for Christmas.

 

As I've not been well I haven't been able to bake anything.  It's gingerbread season in our house at the moment, I will put up recipes soon but at the moment I've just been watching it all happen. However the last couple of days I've felt better so I could decorate. I love gingerbread tree decorations, especially Peggy Porschen ones in her Cake Chick book.

 We have a very traditional Christmas look...reds, greens, gingham etc. So I decided to keep this batch of gingerbread baubles in white and red. I only did 6 or 7 as we already have so much on our tree I didn't want to go too crazy.

We've made lots of gingerbread shapes but mainly plain circles or hearts for the baubles. To decorate I used a base of white royal icing and for the detail I used Wilton Red Icing in a tube that I got for mini Christmas in my stocking (will explain all in another post!) which was good so I didn't need to mix an extra batch. I attached a nozzle with the tiniest hole I could find and piped on some detail I shamelessly copied from the book. I also added some siver balls...you can't have Christmas treats without silver balls right? Let them dry and threaded some wrapping ribbon through the holes in the gingerbread and hung them up!

I'm not sure which design I like the most...I think it's the one with the silver balls cascading down the baubles. I think these would look great in funkier colours like purple and maybe even teal? You can do so much with them even write names...I might have to have another go :)

Keep posted for many more Christmas baking recipes, the gingerbread recipe will hopefully follow tomorrow, it made so much we also managed to make three individual gingerbread houses along with the millions of biscuits and tree decorations. These will also tie in with my seven kinds of Christmas biscuit tradition, now I also have to decide which other six to make. I have to say while you all know I love baking...baking at Christmas is far better, stick some festive and cheesy music on, gingham apron tied and I'm literally in my element and I intend to be covered in some form of batter and flour for the next few weeks! Pin It Now!