It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I spent Saturday afternoon making some wee treats for Christmas gifts. Things are a bit more relaxed now that I don’t sell my wee treats at Christmas. I think back to about 3 years ago when I had nearly $4000 worth of orders – you can imagine how many dozen shortbread, truffles etc I had to make to fill those orders!!!

While I like to try new things there are always a few tried and true Christmas baking favourites. These include Christmas mince tarts and shortbread. I don’t like mince tarts myself – I don’t like dried fruit. I always make little ones as they are quick and easy to put together. This year I had some fruit mince leftover from last year – a traditional one that I make every year using a Ruth Pretty recipe and a rhubarb and vanilla one. I only made 4 dozen tarts and I still have a little fruit mince left, so I think I will use it to make some fruit mince truffles – I am sure my father-in-law would love those!



My other Christmas staple is shortbread – this year I have made some small angels. I may make more later in the week. Everyone seems to love shortbread! I like quite pale shortbread, so the trick is to cook it long and slow. I think the wee angels look really cute.



I also made the cointreau truffles I mentioned last week. I have my own truffle recipe (sorry, top secret!!). I make a myriad of flavours, baileys and white chocolate being the most popular. The white chocolate and cointreau are pretty good though.