Christmas cookies/biscuits - Stained glass and chocolate-vanilla

Last year, for Christmas, Anjalie & I made Spritz cookies. This year we both wanted to try out her new baking set that she got as a birthday present. It includes a whisk, baking sheet, rolling pin and cookie cutters (shaped like tea pot, flower and a heart) - all in perfect sizes for her. She was really looking forward to rolling out and cutting the cookies. So I decided to go with simple sugar cookies and slightly modify them to make it festive for Christmas. I used to regularly make sugar cookies using Wilton sugar cookie recipe while we lived in the USA. Once we moved to the UK, I had trouble making these cookies following the same recipe. This was due to the difference in the flour. The flour in the UK is finer and cannot take the amount of butter asked for in the Wilton cookie recipe. This led to the cookies expanding a lot while baking (despite chilling and/or freezing)- leading to a blob! After trying to increase the amount of flour, a couple of times with disastrous results, I eventually found a recipe that works perfectly here in the UK- by reducing the amount of butter. I have simply jazzed up this basic recipe for Christmas using candies and milk chocolates. I am really pleased with the results. It wowed our friends and family who said it looked and tasted great and Anjalie & I had a fantastic time baking the cookies together! So, without further ado, here is the recipe...

Christmas alphabet cookies

With Christmas break nearing, my now 4 yr old, Anjalie is really excited about making cookies and cakes with me. Last week during our morning walk to her nursery we had a conversation which started about her discussing her starting school in the new year. She, naturally, was excited about it and said she wanted to practice her alphabets. Somehow, it soon turned to Christmas and she wanted to make cookies and cupcakes with me. So this weekend, we made cookies and practised writing alphabets all in in one go! We wrote Christmas with our batter and made Christmas ornaments cookies with sprinkled coloured sugar for a festive touch. You can experiment with your favourite shapes too. Children will especially have a great time with this. Depending on the flour, the piping out of the dough is quite easy for a child to do. But if you find that it is harder then add a tbsp or two of melted butter to make it easier.

Sugar cookies - Heart shaped for Valentine's Day

With Valentine's Day right around the corner, Anjalie & I baked some Heart shaped sugar cookies today to share with friends and family as a token of our appreciation and love for them. We talked about how Valentine's Day is a special day to show our family and friends that we are thankful for having them in our lives. As always it is loads of fun to bake cookies with the little ones as it adds to quality time with them at the same time leads to home-made treats that can be enjoyed together afterwards.

Ginger bread men, women and children

Gingerbread families are the one of oldest cookie recipes dating back to the 16th century. But we never get tired of it here :) We just any excuse to bake them and they are fantastic with spiced-chai or any beverage for that matter. Now with Anjalie taking a keen interest in "assisting" me in the kitchen baking these have become a great way to spend quality time with her while making yummy snacks to share with everyone and enjoy. Since these cookies disappear quite fast we usually have to make extended families that include gingerbread man, woman, children, aunt, uncles, grandparents....you get the point. Here is the recipe to make about 30. This time around we made a few stars as well. So you can use any shape of cookie cutter to enjoy your favorite treat.

Things you will need are:

3 cups plain flour

2 inch fresh ginger, grated and juice squeezed out (optional)

2 tsp ground ginger 

4 tbsp maple syrup/golden syrup/molasses

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup soft brown sugar

1 egg

100 gms unsalted butter

Melt in your mouth Chocolate-chip cookies

This recipe is another one where you can involve your children when preparing and is very simple and a yummy treat especially for the Holiday season.

You will need:
350g/12¼oz unsifted flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
225g/8oz butter
175g/6¼oz caster sugar (you can use normal white sugar after blending it in a mill or processor or blender)
175g/6¼oz soft brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs or 1/2 cup egg substitute
350g/12¼oz milk/dark/white chocolate chips/chunks

Home-made easy short-bread

Cooking with children can be an enjoyable experience to both to the children and the adults. One of the easiest things to do in the kitchen for young children is to bake with the adults. This way they can mix, stir, use the cookie cutter etc and leave the adults to deal with the oven. Anjalie loves to bake and short bread is one of her favourite desserts to bake as well as eat. So far this is the easiest recipe I have tried (so I can let her do everything except the last step which involves hot oven) and it is a hit with Anjalie too. Usually the shortbread literally disappears quickly. But they also make great Christmas give-away when nicely packaged in a hamper :)

Couple of biscuits were gone
b4 I could grab the camera :)

You will need:
125g butter
50g caster sugar
175g plain flour
1 tablespoon milk