Christmas Wreath Cookies

These Christmas Wreath Cookies wouuld be great to serve to any guests that pop round during the festive period or alternatively they'd make really lovely Chirstmas gifts.

You can serve your cookies to guests as they are or alternatively for a bit of fancy presentation you could also thread them with some Christmassy ribbon and then display them on a mini christmas tree or on a twig tree such as the one below designed by David Stark.

These cookies are simple to make. You can use any cookie recipe you like so you can easily vary the flavour to suit your tastes. My cookies are chocolate with a hint of cinnamon but an alternative could be to make vanilla cookies and then melt dark chocolate to contrast.

To cut out the cookies I used an 8.5cm fluted cuter and then cut out a 4cm ring in the centre with a round cutter.

Then to decorate it was simply a case of drizzling melted white chocolate on each cookie. I used a piping bag to put the chocolate on the cookie and then the back of a spoon to spread it around a little, it was quite difficult to get perfect edges. Then whilst the chocolate is still wet each cookie was sprinkled with chopped hazelnuts, dark chocolate and crystallised rose peteals. The rose petals give a lovely contrasting colour to the cookies and they are actually rather tasty! However, a Christmassy alternative to the rose petals could be chopped sour cherries.

The first challenge I'm entering my chocolate wreath cookies into is Tea Time Treats hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Kate at What Kate Baked. Their theme is chocolate as there is always an abundance of the sweet stuff about at Christmas.

I'm also entering my cookies into this month's We Should Cocoa challenge as I added a teaspoon of cinnamon to the chocolate cookie recipe to give it a bit of festive spice. The theme for WSC this month is cinnamon and chocolate so these modified cookies fit the theme perfectly. I usually a stickler for following recipes to the letter, so adding a little cinnamon in place of a small amount of flour was quite adventurous for me! WSC is hosted by Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog and Chele at Chocolate Teapot.

 

Ingredients

245g plain flour
25g cocoa powder
1tsp cinnamon
250g unsalted butter, chilled and diced
140g icing sugar
2 egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla extract
125g white chocolate, broken into pieces
75g dark chocolate
75g unblanched hazelnuts
Crystallised rose petals

The initial recipe suggested making the cookie dough by hand but I cheated and used a food processor...so you can choose either method! Before you start preheat your oven to 180c/160c fan/
gas 4.

Put the flour, cocoa powder, cinnamon and diced butter into a bowl and rub together until it ressembles fine breadcrumbs...or blitz it in your food processor. Add the egg yolks, icing sugar and the 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. Mix this in well until you have a smooth dough and then wrap in clingfilm and pop in the fridge to chill for at least 30 minutes.

Lightly dust your work surface with flour and roll out the dough. This recipe makes about 16 cookies. To cut them out use an 8.5cm fluted cutter and then cut out a smaller round circle from the centre of each cookie using a 3 or 4cm cutter. Place the cookies on a greased baking tray or line your tray with greaseproof paper before putting them on. Make sure you leave sufficient space around each cookie.

Place the cookies in the preheated oven for around 15 minutes but make sure you keep an eye on them as they may catch a little before that. They should begin to darken around the edges when ready. Cool on a wire rack.

To decorate, melt the white chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Whilst it is melting use a potato peeler to create dark chocolate curls. Once melted the white chocolate should be drizzled around each wreath cookie. I used a piping back to make it easier and neater and then spread the white chocolate with the back of a spoon. When you're happy with this sprinkle each cookie with a mixture of the hazelnuts, dark chocolate curls and rose petals. I would recommend completing one cookie at a time otherwise by the time you come to sprinkling on the top, the chocolate may have already set and then the nuts and so on won't stick.

* Adapted from Hamlyn's 200 Christmas Recipes

White Chocolate and Cherry Loaf

The tea time treats theme this month is 'Cake Stall Cakes and Bakes'. So here's my contribution to the cause...a White Chocolate and Cherry Loaf cake.

This was an interesting cake...I'm not sure whether I used the wrong size loaf tin but there was an awful lot of cake mixture and when I put it in the tin it was full to the brim before I'd even started baking. The recipe called for a 1kg tin...I thought I used a 2lb tin which roughly equates but when I put the cake in the oven it overflowed!

In the end the cake still worked out...although some oven cleaning was required afterwards. It was edible but it was a little claggy and not perfect! I did however enjoy the fresh cherries in the cake. The frosting is melted white chocolate and mascarpone, finished with white chocolate curls on top.

It seems that fruit is destined to sink in cakes, I did the whole dust in flour thing before mixing the cherries in but still most of them ended up at the bottom. Fortunately as some of the cherries were sprinkled on top just as the cake went in the oven, they actually stayed fairly near the surface. Does anyone have any ingenius ways of preventing fruit sinking?

Tea Time Treats is hosted by Karen over and Lavender and Lovage and Kate at What Kate Baked. Karen is hosting this month and there are always loads of fabulous entries, so check out the round up at the end of July...or better still join in!

I'm also entering this cake into Simple and in Season as cherries are the perfect summer fruit. This month it is hosted by Fleur from Homemade by Fleur with the regular host being Fabulicious Food.
Ingredients

225g butter
225 golden caster sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
225g self-raising flour
375g fresh cherries, pitted
175g white chocolate chopped

White Chocolate Frosting

100g white chocolate
140g half-fat mascarpone
White chocolate curls

Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan/gas 4. Line a 1kg (2.2lb) loaf tin with baking parchment. The paper should come up higher than the sides.

Cream together the butter and sugar until it's pale and fluffy. Then add the eggs a little at a time so they don't curdle. Next add the vanilla extract before sifting in the flour, folding it in until the mixutre is smooth.

Ensure all cherries are pitted and then dust them in flour, this should help them not to sink in the cake! Add half of the cherries and half of the chocolate and gently stir into the mix. Spoon into the prepared tin before scattering the remaining chocolate and cherries on the top. Bake fro 1hr 10 - 1hr 15 mins until a skewer comes out clean. Upon removing it from the oven, leave to cool for a few minutes and then turn the cake out onto a wire rack to cool completel

To make the frosting, bring the mascarpone to room temperature. In the meantime melt the white chocolate over a pan of water. When melted stir in 1 tbsp of the mascarpone, then beat the remainder in. Don't overbeat otherwise the frosting will go grainy. Spread over the top of the cake and finish with curls of white chocolate.

Black Forest Fudge

Well, it's fair to say that May has been quite a hardcore baking month, I've been baking like a demon and have been more than a little cross-eyed on a number of occasions after piping, sticking and cutting cake decorations! So I thought I'd try something completely different this weekend. I've probably made fudge at some point in the dim and distant past but I don't remember it.

It turns out that fudge is fairly easy to make, all you need is a sugar thermometer and the taste testers definitely enjoyed this one...but quite frankly I think it would be difficult to find someone who didn't like a mixture of white chocolate, dark chocolate, double cream and sugar!!

Once you've made your fudge you have to chill it in the fridge overnight before cutting it into squares, however if you take it out and leave it, it gets pretty soft. So we discovered that for optimal fudge eating it is best to leave it in the fridge and then take it out about 10 minutes before you want to eat it...if you can wait that long! :-)

Ingredients

40g unsalted butter
100g dark glace cherries
500g gold caster sugar
275ml double cream
75 g dark chocolate
50g white chocolate

Ideally, you need a 17cm square tin for this fudge but I only have a 20cm square tin and that seemed to work just as well. The first thing to do is butter and line the base and sides of the tin. In preparation it is also helpful to chop up the cherries at this point. The recipe suggested halving 50g worth and quartering the remaining 25g but I didn't find this to be enough so I increased it to 100g. Also grate both of the white and dark chocolate into seperate bowls.

The sugar, cream and butter should then be combined in a heavy based saucepan, you also need to add 3 tablespoons of water before heating gently for 5-10 minutes, this should dissolve the sugar. Once you've reached this stage, increase the temperature and bring the mixture to the boil. Pop in a sugar thermometre and head to 113 degrees celsius (235F). Once the mixture reaches this stage and is nice and thick, take it off the heat.

Pour a third of the mixture in a metal bowl (I used another saucepan), add the white chocolate to this bowl and the dark chocolate to the original saucepan. Stir both until slightly thickened, I think I waited too long as my fudge didn't swirl quite as well as I had hoped, so don't wait too long!

Finally, pour the dark chocolate fudge into the bottom of the prepared tin, scatter the quartered cherries over the top before pouring over the white chocolate mix to cover. Then to get the swirl effect, drag a skewer through the mix to create two tone swirls. To finish, place the halved cherries on top and then chill in the tin overnight. Turn the fudge out of the tin to cut into squares. The recipe suggests it makes 49 squares, so cut it 7 by 7 or larger if you wish! :-)

* Adapted from Mrs Hope's Chocolate Box