Christmas Cookies

The Christmas baking has begun. I made these Christmas tree cookies for friends. The recipe is basically a sugar cookie recipe, cut into the shape of Christmas trees with a cut out in the centre. You half bake the cookies and then pop some crushed lollies into the centres, another 5 minutes in the oven and you get this stained glass window effect. I made half the dough into these cookies and froze the other half. I may make some more in the shape of stars. They would also make cool Christmas tree decorations if you poked a little hole in the top to thread some ribbon through.



Last night was my second night all month with no function to go to. I was hanging out for some real food, as you tend to eat nibbly bits at functions and then don’t have much appetite for dinner. So I cooked some fish – I followed a recipe from the latest Jamie Oliver book which puts a topping of rolled oats and mustard on the fish before oven roasting. It was quite nice. We had it with new jersey benne potatoes, boiled and then lightly crushed and mixed with chopped olives, lemon juice and olive oil, and a salad of rocket, asparagus, almonds and avocado. Very yummy and just what the doctor ordered!


Stained Glass Window Cookies

250g butter
¾ c sugar
1 tsp vanilla paste
1 egg
2 ½ c flour
hard boiled lollies, lightly crushed

· Beat together butter, sugar and vanilla paste until light and creamy
· Beat in egg
· Stir in flour until you get a firmish dough
· Chill dough for 30 minutes
· Roll out until about 4mm thin, cut into shapes, cutting out a wee shape in the middle of each cookie and then chill again (I always freeze the shapes at that point)
Bake at 180c for about 8 minutes, then place the crushed lollies in the holes, and put back in the oven for about 7 minutes. Cool on trays

TWD - Grandma's All Occasion Sugar Cookies

This week’s TWD recipe is Grandma’s All Occasion Sugar Cookies and was chosen by Ulrike of Kutchenlaten. This was a great choice for this time of year, as they are the perfect cookie to cut into shapes and decorate. We were going to friends for dinner on Saturday night and I always like to make them a little Christmas treat, and these were the perfect thing.

I found the dough to be quite sweet and also quite soft. The cookies didn’t bake as crisply as I would have liked. I used vanilla paste rather than vanilla extract which gave them the lovely vanilla flecks throughout as well as quite a strong vanilla flavour.



I had seen little cookies decorated as Christmas presents in Rocket Kitchen, so I thought I would emulate their idea. I was actually really pleased with how they turned out. I cut out fondant for the white part and then used a piping gel to pipe the bows. The only unfortunate part is that the piping gel doesn’t completely firm up like royal icing would, so they are not ideal to package up for gifts. While I like the look of my cookies, I actually prefer to make a firm shortbread for decorating cookies as it gives a firmer base and stays crisper. I will have to try the sugar cookies again as a slice and bake style cookie, as I’m not sure that they are the perfect cookie for decorating.



I bet there is a lot of creativity amongst the other TWDers – have a look here.

Takaka Oaty Ginger Crunch

I thought that this week I would do something a bit different for the builders and so I made this Takaka Oaty Ginger Crunch. Ginger crunch is a New Zealand favourite which you will find in most cafes. This version has oats in it and isn’t as crunchy as the traditional version. It is a yummy slice though and very easy to make. I did double the icing recipe as the original recipe seems a bit mean – I think ginger crunch needs a lovely thick icing (it tastes a bit like ginger Russian fusge!).

Because of all the Christmas parties, last night was the first time I cooked dinner in almost a week! My husband’s choice was pork meatballs – I used pork mince mixed with bread crumbs, tomato sauce, chopped coriander, chilli and cumin. We had these with noodles which I mixed with sweet chilli sauce, fish sauce and soy sauce, and broccoli. Dinner took about 30 minutes to make, and was really delicious.

Last Night Wilton Course 3

Tuesday night was my last night of Wilton course 3. We had to do a tiered cake. I based mine on the one on the cover of one of my Peggy Porchen books. I was quite pleased with how it turned out, and I think with more practice I will get my roses looking a bit better. The cake is red velvet cake and I used the recipe from the Confetti Cakes recipe book.





I have really enjoyed the three wilton courses I have done this year. There is one more course and I am already booked in to do that next year. I know I am never going to be a great cake decorator, but I feel confident now to have a go, knowing that I can do it “good enough”!

I haven’t been doing any cooking this week, so can’t even tell you what dinner was last night as I have been out at functions every single night (other than Tuesday which was cake decorating). Next week is only two functions to attend, so there will be a bit more blog substance!

So, once again, a post with more photos than words!

Christmas is coming!

This has been a hectic week for me with functions every night of the week, so this post is also a bit of a mish mash of all sorts of things that have been going on! The first of these is a client function we had on Monday night for our trust clients – in real life I am a lawyer specialising in asset structuring and trusts. My firm administers and operates over 850 trusts. We had a Christmas function on Monday night with about 90 attendees.


We wanted to give them a take home gift, so I made these gingerbread Christmas trees and decorated them. It seemed like a good idea at the time and they looked good on mass, but they are a bit wobbly as it was hot and I over –committed :0) But they are my first real piece of Christmas baking, so that was exciting!




Secondly I have been awarded two blog awards, a blogging buddy one from the lovely Gaye at Laws of the Kitchen and a Kreative Blogger award from Hannah of Hannah’s Country Kitchen. Thank you so much to both of you – this means a lot. Both Gaye and Hannah are fellow lawyers and have lovely blogs of their own. Hannah is my idol – she won masterchef in the UK – how cool is that!!!!! Anyway, thanks to you both and I would like to pass on the blogging buddy award to Morven of Food, Art and Random Thoughts. Morven is a fellow Nzer and such a sweet blogging friend. I would also like to pass the creative blogger award to Kim of Scrumptious Photography – you have to check out her blog, the photos are so fabulous!




Lastly, Gaye from Laws of the Kitchen, asked me to participate in the worldwide blogger bake off – read all about it on Gaye’s blog. I decided to participate by baking these Turkish bread rings (I think they are known as Simmit rings). You can find the recipe here, but it was featured in Cuisine magazine a while ago. The bread rings were really easy to make and gave a nice Turkish bread style texture. They also froze really well.

You Want Pies With That - White Christmas Pie

This month’s “You want Pies with That” theme is Holiday Songs. Initially I was quite excited as I imagined that I would have lots of ideas, but the more I thought about it, the harder it became. I settled in the end for a “white Christmas” pie. I chose this song because in New Zealand, Christmas is in the middle of summer, so we will never get a white Christmas, but also because a traditional kiwi dessert is pavlova (in fact there is a long debate between NZ and Australia regarding who “invented” the pavlova – people have written dissertations on the subject – everyone knows it was a Nzer!), so my White Christmas pie has a touch of pavlova to it as well.

The inside of the pie is Greek yoghurt, which I strained to thicken and then swirled with passionfruit pulp – passionfruit is a popular topping for pavlova. I then topped the yoghurt filling with mini meringues to represent little pavlovas. The base is a simple shortcrust pastry.



I have to confess to being a little disappointed with my creation. I did think long and hard about it, but in the end, my pie came down to what I could put together in very little time – perhaps that is another reason why it can be considered a Christmassy pie, as it was made in between the usual holiday rush. The pie bases were baked on Saturday when I was baking gingerbread Christmas trees, the meringues were baked last night when I got home from my cake decorating class and the filling was thrown together, because that is what I had in the fridge!!!!

So, I do apologise for my White Christmas pie. I look forward to seeing what the other participants made for their Holiday Songs pies.

TWD - Linzer Sables

This week’s TWD recipe was chosen by Noskos of Living the Life and is Linzer Sables. Dorie’s sables are actually one of the first recipes of Dorie’s that I encountered on the net – I printed the recipe off, but never made them. Linzer biscuits remind me of Belgium Biscuits (in fact there may be a connection, as I think Linzer biscuits are Austrian and it is quite possible that what we know in NZ as Belgium biscuits, may have started off life as German biscuits, but the name changed to Belgium biscuits during the war – if you get my drift!). Anyway, back to the Linzer biscuits!

In actually made these in a bit of a rush on Sunday evening. I only made a half batch, because after making and decorating over 90 cookies for a client function (more about that later in the week), the thought of more rolling and cutting was a little off-putting. I did really love these though and will make them again. The recipe called for ground nuts – I used ground macadamia nuts which are a little coarser than almonds, so my cookies had real texture. I think next time I would add more spice, as the little bit of cinnamon and ground cloves wasn’t enough for me. I filled my sables with raspberry jam, but do like Dorie’s suggestion of filling them with chocolate ganache. I will try that next time. These would be a lovely biscuit to give as a gift as they look so pretty!

See what the other TWDers thought here.