Stained Glass Candle Cookies

I think you'll impress everyone if you had a few of these around the house.


All ablaze. I used a small candle in it's own glass holder. The candle didn't make the lollies melt which was something I was wondering about. Just be careful when using candles especially around children, you know the 'don't leave candles going when you leave the room' etc. I had this on when my children were in bed.

It's Eat Christmas Cookies Season 3 over at Food Blogga. I participated last year and there were some really yummy Christmas cookies. I've checked-out the cookies for this year and the Chocolate Toffee Crunch looks oh soooo good and easy to make, can't wait to make them.

Find out about the Round-Up so you can join in too.

Check out this years Round-up cookies.

Stained Glass Candle Cookies

Dark Gingerbread (recipe below)

250g clear boiled fruit lollies (green and red starburst lolly pops were all I could find)

Royal Icing (coloured if you like)

1. Preheat oven to 200C. Line two baking trays with paper. Thinly roll out the dark gingerbread mixture on a floured surface and cut out twelve 12cm x 8cm rectangles. Transfer the rectangles to the lined baking sheets, spacing them slightly apart.

2. Using a square cutter (or sharp knife) cut out six squares from each piece, leaving a fine windowpane-effect frame. Bake the pieces for 5 minutes, then remove them from the oven and leave aside.

3.Ligtly crush boiled lollies while still in their wrappers, by tapping lightly with a rolling pin. Unseal the wrappers and place a few crushed lollies in each square of the frames.

4. Return the baking sheets to oven for a further 5 minutes until the lollies have melted. If there are any squares that are not completely flooded with melted lolly, use a toothpick to ease mixture to the sides. You will need to do this quickly as the lollies harden quickly. Leave the pieces on the tray to cool completely

5. Spoon royal icing into piping bag with a medium writing nozzle. Pipe lines over the gingerbread. Leave to set for about 30 minutes.

6. Sandwich two long sides of biscuits together with icing holding together tightly until they are stuck together and leave to dry.

Dark Gingerbread

makes 24

prep time: 10 minutes, plus chilling

baking time: 12-15 minutes

410g cups self-raising flour

2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 stp gound cloves

125g firm unsalted butter

125g dark muscavado sugar

125g black treacle/molasses

1 egg, lightly beaten

1. Preheat oven to 200 C and line two baking trays

2. Put the flour and spices in a food processor. Cut butter into small pieces, add to processor and blend until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the sugar, treacle and egg, and mix to a dough. Wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes.

3. Roll out the mixture on a floured surgace. Cut out rounds or squares and place on baking sheets. Bake for 12-15 minutes until the spaces have risen slightly and appear a little paler in colour. Leave for 2 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

I know this recipe idea came from a cookie book but I cannot remember which one. If you know please let me know so i can give credit.

Peppermint Cookies

A friend made these for our Christmas Enrichment Night and I've been wanting to make them ever since because they were deliciously pepperminty (no fake peppermint essence here, Candy Canes all the way!) This recipe will be great if you have left over candy canes after Christmas.


The recipe is from Crisco. They used red, white and green candy canes which looked really festive, so if you can, use those.

Peppermint Cookies
Prep time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: 10 minutes
Yields: 3 dozen

3/4 stick Crisco® Butter Shortening Sticks OR 3/4 cup Crisco® Butter Shortening (I just used 3/4 cup of canola spread margarine)
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 3/4 cups Pillsbury BEST® All Purpose Flour
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup crushed peppermint candy canes or peppermint candies (see below for my method of crushing)
Additional 1/4 cup crushed candy for top of cookies (optional)

1. Heat oven to 350ºF/175ºC.
2. Beat shortening, brown sugar, granulated sugar, milk and vanilla in large bowl of electric mixer on medium speed until well blended. Beat in egg.
3. Combine flour, baking soda and salt. Mix into shortening mixture at low speed just until blended. Stir in crushed candy. Shape into 1-inch balls. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheet.
4. Bake 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned. Do not overbake. Immediately sprinkle with about ¼ teaspoon crushed candy. Cool 2 minutes. Remove to rack to cool completely.
Tip: A 6-oz package of 12 candy canes will make enough crushed candy for the cookies and the garnish.


How I crushed Candy Canes
My friend had a problem crushing her candy canes and asked me to let her know if I came up with a better way then using a rolling pin and a ziplock bag full of canes. To start with I put the canes in a deep bowl and tried to crush them with the end of a rolling pin. Shards of cane went everywhere and after other fruitless attempts I had a break through:

1. Heat a few canes at a time in the microwave on high for 25 seconds. *Careful, when they come out they will be hot.* Try and work quickly with the warm canes it's a lot easier than cooled hard canes.

2. Put them in a teatowel and beat with the end of a rolling pin. Below is a picture of half beaten canes. At this point I just crushed them with my fingers. Easy!

3. You could also use scissors to cut half beaten canes (while still warm) into little tiny pieces.

4. Crushed canes. The last batch of candy canes I warmed up just crushed straight away, no scissors or fingers needed. Too easy!!

I'm sending these cookies into the Eat Christmas Cookies, Season 2 Event. Check out the Round-up page to see all the Christmas cookies people have sent in.

Koala Cookies

These biscuits turned out great. Petal did a lot of the work on these because they are really easy. We'll be making another batch soon so Petal can give some to her friends as Christmas gifts.

Ginger Cookies ( you can use any cookie recipe though)
2 cups (300g) plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
1 cup (200g) caster sugar
125g cold butter, chopped
1 egg
1 tsp golden syrup

1. Preheat oven to 170°C/140°C fan-forced. Greased oven trays; line with baking paper.

2. Process sifted dry ingredients with butter until mixture is crumbly; add egg, golden syrup and ginger, process until ingredients come together. Knead on floured surface until smooth.

3. Make 1 30g ball and 2 8g balls (you don't have to measure if you don't want to. I'm a bit thingy about getting things just so). Position as below.

4. Push a paddle pop stick into the big ball just until you can feel it the other side.
5. Flatten the balls over the stick. Push the paddle pop stick up further if you need to. The paddle pop stick should be quite a ways in.

6. Cook them in the oven for approx. 15 minutes.

7. Decorate. We used mini m&m's for the eyes, left over oval jubes from the flower biscuits, sugarpaste flowers for the girls (a bit Hello Kitty don't you think. *Hello Koala*??). Used royal icing to stick them down. You could use melted chocolate.


You can see these being made (but a Teddy Bear) on Howdini.com.

Pretty Flower Biscuits

There are so many great blogs out there that have creative kids food, there's Little Nummies, Gourmet Mom on the Go and Fun Snacks 4 Kids to name a few. I've been inspired by these blogs to set aside one day a week to post my own creative kids food. You don't have to be a kid to enjoy these fun foods either.

I've just realised that Petal snuck an extra button on three of the ones she made.
You'll need three ingredients:
*Marie biscuits/cookies or other round biscuits (Marie's are an arrowroot biscuit)
*White chocolate buttons
*Jubes

Melt some chocolate buttons in microwave. Spread chocolate on the biscuit leaving the edge chocolate free (if you want). Place a jube in the middle followed by 6 chocolate buttons as petals around the jube. Position buttons on an angle.

Of course there are lots of other things you can use instead of jubes and chocolate buttons. Here are some suggestions:

Middle (instead of jubes)

*saltanas

*smarties

*peanut m&m's

*dried apricot or date cut in half

*macadamia nut

Petals (instead of choc buttons)

*smarties

*dried apricots or dates

*nuts: almonds, walnuts

*apple or pear (quartered and then cut in half again)

*banana

If you have other suggestion let us know. We'd love to hear it :)

These were really tasty, even my husband agrees. The taste changes depending on the flavour of the jube. The first one I ate had a blackcurrent jube and it tasted like an Iced Vovo (actually it tasted better) and it was soooo good. Next time (yup, there'll be a next time) i'll try fruit pastels, because I think they'll have more flavour than the cheap jubes I bought.

Passionfruit Melting Moments

My husband told me these tasted fabulous. I was slightly taken aback because I can't remember if my husband has ever said something I've cooked was fabulous!

Biscuit

250g unsalted butter

40g (1/3 cup) icing sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

185g (1 1/2 cups) self-raising flour

60g (1/2 cup) custart powder

Passionfruit Filling

60g unsalted butter

60g (1/2 cup) icing sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons passionfruit pulp

Preheat oven to 180°C. Line two baking trays with baking paper. Beat the butter and sugar until light and creamy. Beat in vanilla essence. Sift in the flour and custard powder and mix to a soft dough. Roll level tablespoons of the mixture into 28 balls and place on the trays. Flatten slightly with a floured fork. (I ended up putting more flour and custard powder in this as I found it hard to form into balls. It made them turn out slightly dry and extremly melt in your mouth crumbly.)

Bake for approx. 20 minutes, or until lightly golden. Cool on a wire rack.

To make the filling, beat the butter and sugar until light and creamy, then beat in the passionfruit pulp. Use the filling to sandwich the biscuits together. Leave to firm before serving. Makes 14 filled biscuits.