Christmas Cookies

I love making cut-out cookies. And I always think I'll love decorating them. These days, though, it always seems to be harder and more time-consuming than it was when I was little. And rarely do sugar cookies have the depth or interest in flavours that drop cookies do.

But Christmas is a time for decorating, and I've always liked playing around with new recipies, so I was willing to try the chocolate biscuit recipe provided in this month's cookie carnival.

Let me say, firstly, that my brothers - the main baked-goods eaters in this house - loved the chocolate cookies. And I liked them very much myself too. The cinnamon brought them alive, I think.

However, my dough was quite moist, and difficult to work with unless very cold. Still, I persevered, and even tried to get fancy with the decorating. My (slightly disapointing) results are here;








This last one is not following any of the recipes provided. Instead, it's a gingerbread recipe, one I use every year to make our gingerbread house. The dough's easy to work with, and i decided to experiment with 'glass windows'. They didn't unfortunately work quite as well as I hoped (not as clear as they have been in the past - but neither were the sweets I used). But I'm quite pleased with this landscape one.

Christmas Carrot Cake

Wow...long time no blog. I've had a busy term, and that, combined with a lack of oven, has kept me from any creative cooking or baking. But I'm back home now, and the countdown to Christmas is well and truly on, so I've been catching up. Just a quick post to start off with though.

This term I've developed a love of carrot cake. Odd really, as it's not something I ever would have eaten before, but Sainsbury's do an absolutely amazing version...which you can't get here in Geneva of course. So I decided to make one myself.

Okay, this isn't really a proper carrot cake. There's plenty of carrot and spice in it, but other than that it's just a plain sponge cake. And the cream cheese frosting was a bit more liquid than I would have liked. But it was still yummy. I may have to experiment more once Christmas is over.