Edible Gifts

I can see how, as a result of last week's posts, you might all begin to think that I spend all of my time these days in the kitchen, baking and cooking for Christmas. I can also see that this post will just further that belief!

However, let me say that I don't! I was honestly hardly in the kitchen today.

Or yesterday.

I do love Christmas cooking and baking though. I love all my old traditional recipes taken from my mum but I also love to find some new recipes. I stumbled upon these two on Friday when I was looking online for a couple of quick gift ideas. I needed something for the Boy's Brigade leaders and also for the Kid's Club leaders at church.

I found these two recipes on the BBC Good Food website. They are really simple to make and really delicious to eat. I would highly recommend trying them both out. 

Firstly we made Peppermint Creams.

These contain uncooked egg white, which all of my boys except David are allergic to, so only he was able to help me with these (I think he was quite pleased with that anyway!)

You will need:

250g icing sugar

½ an egg white

peppermint essence

green food colouring (optional)

 dark chocolate , melted

~All you need to do is put the icing sugar in a bowl, add enough of the egg white to make a paste (it looks like rollable icing), and enough peppermint essence until you get the strength of mint you want. Also add in your food colouring if using.

~Dust your surface with a little icing sugar, roll the paste out and cut out little shapes.

~Place them on greaseproof paper and leave to dry out for a few hours.

~Melt a little dark chocolate and dip the mints in the chocolate. We just dipped the underneath parts in but you could do whatever you fancied.

~Place them back on the greaseproof till the chocolate is dry.

Baileys and White Chocolate Fudge

Our second recipe should come with a health warning. If you are making this as a gift, you really must make sure and leave enough for yourself too!

Oh. and a more serious warning, make sure you use a nice big pan. I used one that seemed ok until it all started bubbling up and up and up and over the top!

And Baileys, in case non-UK readers aren't so sure, is the brand name of an Irish Cream Liqueur.

500g granulated sugar

500ml whipping cream

50ml Baileys

150g white chocolate

1. 
   

~Put sugar, cream and Baileys in a large pan and, stirring slowly, bring it to a simmer. Make sure the sugar is dissolved (it will stop feeling grainy on the base of the pan), then turn the heat up to a rolling boil.
~Adjust the heat until the mixture bubbles without getting too near the top of the pan. Keep bubbling, stirring occasionally, until a small amount of mixture dropped into a glass of cold water will form a soft ball that you can pick up on the end of a teaspoon.

~Take off the heat, add the chocolate, mix well until melted and give a quick beat with a wooden spoon to make it smoother.

~Pour into a square tin and leave to cool. Cut it into squares about half and hour or so after putting in the tin. It just makes it easier while it is still warm and soft.

~Package up nicely with cellophane bags and ribbon.

Tweet