colourful Christmas fare

More Christmas fare to give as gifts!! This time it is meringues and candy canes.

I am one of those people who doesn’t like to waste things, so I always end up with leftover egg whites in little plastic bags in the freezer!!! Meringues are quite a good thing to give people at Christmas as they look nice and can be useful for them to have on Christmas day. I use a Ruth Pretty meringue recipe which has a ratio of 70g castor sugar to 1 egg white. This year I decided to make them a bit more festive by colouring them with green swirls. I was going to do red ones as well, but time got the better of me. I piped half of the mixture and did the other half in free form. I like the shape of the piped ones (see above), but the free form ones (see below)had more of a green swirl which I like better.





The candy canes aren’t quite as cool as I had hoped for. I like the colours and everything, it’s just that my icing is a bit messy. I think one of my goals next year is to go to a biscuit decorating class. I have done one in the past, but a refresher would be good. Part of my problem is that I am a bit quick!! I think if I slowed down a bit I would get a better result!! Maybe that could be my new year resolution? The gingerbread biscuit recipe is one I have been using for years. Unfortunately the biscuits soften once iced, but I don’t think there is anything you can do to stop that. Sometimes if I don’t feel like ginger biscuits (or more likely, have run out of ground ginger!) I substitute the ginger with 2 tsp cinnamon and 1 tsp mixed spice.