Christmas Calendar 2018 - Peppermint xylitol sweets

Last year I made these peppermint sweets, I thought it could be great, if it would be possible to get a cooling effect build into these sweets. This could be another way to increase the pepermint flavour in these sweets.

One way to get a cooling effect in sweet is to use xylitol, which will lower the temperature in your mouth, when the xylitol goes from crystalline form to liquid form. Therefore it is important, that the xylitol does not dissolve in these sweets. I was a little uncertain, if it would work, as there is some water available in the egg white. This experiment of mine turned out just as I had imagining it.

PS: xylitol is a sugar alcohol, so of you eat too many of these sweet you can experience a laxative effect. On the other side, this is a sugar-free sweet :-)

PPS: xylitol has a very positive effect on the health of your teeth (tooth health).

Peppermint sweet:

• 1 cup of pasteurised egg white
• 38 ml peppermint extract
• 400-500 g xylitol - grinded into the texture like icing sugar
• Crystalline xylitol for sprinkling on the surface - optional

1. Add the egg white and peppermint extract into a medium size mixing bowl. Stir it together.
2. Add in the icing sugar little by little, while the mass is stirred between each addition.
3. Keep adding in the icing mass, until the mass is firm, but still sticky.
4. Place a piece of baking parchment on the kitchen tabletop.
5. Use two teaspoons to form a smaller ball in the sizde of a hazel/walnut. 
6. Place these ball on the baking parchment. Press them flat using the backside of a teaspoon, which is dipped into water from time to time, so the peppermint sweet does mot stick to the teaspoon.
7. Leave the peppermint sweet to dry in the baking parchment for up to 24 hours, before they are stored in an airtight container.

Christmas Calendar 2018 - Speculoos cookies

In the December 2018 issue of Country Living I found this recipe on speculoos cookies, it was actually a cookie sandwich with a dark chocolate ganache. However, after my recent difficulties in getting the right texture in these eggnog truffles, I decided only to bake the cookies and not to try my hands on the ganache creme.

I made the following modifications. Replacement of the light muscovado sugar with the dark version of muscovado sugar, as I could not locate the light version in my local supermarket. I actually think, that the use of the dark version give a more spicy flavour.
As I did not have any mixed spice, I decided to use a mixture of spices for the German lebkuchen.

If you are looking for other suggestions for spicy cookies, when take a a look at these bastognes.

Speculoos cookies: - 24 cookies

• 125 g butter - soft
• 125 g dark muscovado sugar
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 250 g (cake) wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground German Christmas cake spice mixture or ground mixed spice
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• ½ teaspoon salt

1. Whip the butter and muscovado sugar together until pale and fluffy using an electrical hand mixer.
2. Add in the milk, and beat again.
3. In a separate mixing bowl weight in the flour, baking powder and soda and all the spices. Stir everything together.
4. Add the flour and spices mixture little by little into the butter-sugar mixture.
5. After the final addition the cookie dough looks like bread crumble, but keep whipping for another 2 minutes, until the dough texture changes and stick more together.
6. Divide the dough into 2 portions, which are shape in a discs shape, which is covered in cling film. 
7. Let the cookie dough rest cold for minimum 1 hours, night over or up to 2 days.
8. Take the cookie dough out of the refrigerator. Let it rest for ½ hour.
9. Heat up the fan oven to 170'C.
10. Roll the cookie dough into a thickness of approx. 5 mm.
11. Use a biscuit cutter of approx 6 cm to stamp our the cookies.
12. Re-roll the cookie dough until, all the dough is used. If the dough becomes too warm, when let the dough rest cold for 30 minutes.
13. Place the cookies on baking tray covered with baking parchment.
14. You can stamp a pattern into the surface of the cookie using a glass with a pattern in the bottom.
15. Bake the cookies at 15-18 minutes at 170'C (fan oven), until they are they are firm.
16. Cool down the cookies, before they are stored in airtight containers.

Christmas Calendar 2018 - After Eight marzipan treats

I was the lucky winner of a big box of After Eight chocolate in connection with the Christmas present play at the annual Christmas lunch for the Stylish Women last week-end.

The easy part would be just to eat the chocolate. However, one of the Stylish Womnes mentioned, that she had seen a recipe, where the After Eight was used as fill in a marzipan sweet treat.

Therefore I have been looking for some recipe suggestion using After Eight in sweet treats, and here I have located this recipe by Anne au Chocolat.

I decided to cut the sweet treat as a classic afternoon tea sandwich to avoid, that the size of each sweet treat became to big. The drawback by cutting the through the After Eight chocolate is, that the peppermint filling start to run !!!

After Eight marzipan treat: - 30 pieces

• 15 pieces of After Eight chocolate
• 200 g marzipan
• Icing sugar for rolling of the marzipan
• 150-200 g dark chocolate
• Freeze-dried raspberry & chopped pistachio nuts for decoration

1. Divide the marzipan into 2 portions. Roll each portion of marzipan , so 10 pieces of After Eight chocolate can be placed on the marzipan. Use icing sugar for dusting of the marzipan, so it does not stick to the rolling pin.
2. Place the 15 pieces of After Eight in 3 rows of 5 pieces each on a bottom layer of marzipan. Cover the After Eight chocolate with the second marzipan layer.
3. Use a knife to cut out 15 pieces of After Eight chocolate covered with marzipan on each side. Trim away left over marzipan.
4. Divide each piece into two triangles.
5. Temper the dark chocolate.
6. Brush each piece of marzipan with melted tempered chocolate. Brush the sides and the top. Let the chocolate become solid.
7. Turn the chocolate treat up-side down. Brush the uncovered side with melted tempered chocolate, which is sprinkled with cupped pistachio nuts and freeze-dried  raspberries.
8. Store in an air-tight container.

Christmas Calendar 2018 - Christmas serving item

 

After my success being a Royal Copenhagen vandalist (according to my mother) turning a Blå Blomst tea cup and saucer into this serving item, I decided to continue my career as China vandalist !!!


I have found a Christmas China plate as well as Christmas China coffee cup second hand, and they have now been turned into a new serving item dedicated to serving all the different home-made Christmas goodies to my Christmas guests.

It is local cafe & decoration shop Cafebutikken Vejle, which turns old China cups and plates have been turned to such serving items.


It costed me 129 DKK to have the Cafebutikken Vejle drilling holes and assembled into such a serving item + the price for the actually China. And it can happen, that the China breaks during the drilling process.

As usual I am very satisfied the outcome, so now I have to see, if my mother can forgive me for my "vandalism against Royal Copenhagen China", when she see this new serving item.

Christmas Calendar 2018 - Citrus & cinnamon gin tonic

We are very close to the week-end, which I will be starting off by enjoying the gin tonic in Christmas style :-)

You can at the same time see, that I have got some new glasses for drinks in form of these high-ball glasses.

Citrus & cinnamon gin tonic: - 1 cocktail

• 6 cl gin
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 slice of orange
• 20- 25 cl Fever-Tree clementine & cinnamon tonic
• ice cubes

1. Start by placing the cinnamon stick and orange slice into the high-ball glass.
2. Add in ice cubes.
3. Pour in the gin.
4. Fill the glass with clementine & cinnamon tonic.
5. Cheers and enjoy your week-end :-)

Christmas Calendar 2018 - Eggnog truffles

Today it is time to test out another recipe from Country Living issue December 2018. It is a recipe on eggnog truffles, which on the photo in the magazine looks like these white chocolate truffles. However, this recipe did not work as expected in my kitchen. The truffle mass did not become thick enough, so I could not shape into ball shape !!!

So now I sitting here wondering why ??? What did go wrong for either me or the recipe ? In the recipe the applied cream is double cream, which is almost impossible to get hold of in Denmark. Double cream contains 48% fat, while the normal Danish whipping cream contains 38% fat, so perhaps this can explain the issue, that the truffle mass does become thick ?

 I will try to "safe" the truffles mass by using the truffles mass as filling into some chocolate.

Eggnog truffles:- 15 truffles

• 100 ml dairy whipping cream with 38% fat
• 200 g white chocolate - cut into smaller pieces
• 25 g butter
• 2 tablespoon rum
• 1 pinch of vanilla corn
• generous grating of nutmeg
• desiccated coconut

1. Put the dairy cream, butter and white chocolate into a mixing bowl, which is place in cooking pot with simmering water.
2. Stir the ingredients, until they are melted together into a homogeneous mass.
3. Remove the mixing bowl from the cooking pot, stir in the rum, vanilla corn and grated nutmeg (according to taste preference).
4. Place the mass cold night over.
5. Use two teaspoons with divided the truffles mass into ball shape.
6. Coat the truffles mass in desiccated coconut.
7. Store cold in the refrigerator.

Christmas Calendar 2018 - Stollen bites

I am a huge fan of the German Christmas cake called "Stollen", which I have been baking at different occasions. So when I noticed a recipe on Stollen bites in Country Living issue December 2018, I knew at once, that I had to bake these small cake bites.

However, my experiment did not go as well as expected. I prefer, that the marzipan part of the cake in hidden inside, while the marzipan layer here is visible. The taste of the stollen bites is ok, so perhaps you should  just turn the bites into a whole cake instead of ?

In case you would like to try your hands on some Stollen cakes you can have a look into these recipes:

• German Christmas cake Stollen - one of  my favorite recipes
• Christollen
• Stollen with cranberries and marzipan
• Stollen with almond filling

Stollen bites: - 25-30 pieces

• 25 g dried cranberries
• 25 g raisins
• 25 g sucat
• 25 g orange peel
• 1 tablespoon rum
• 75 ml milk
• 75 g butter
• 1 organic orange - only the zest
• 225 g wheat flour
• 20 g fresh yeast
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon - grounded
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice - grounded
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves - grounded
• 2 cardamon pods - only the seeds, which should be grounded
• 1 egg + 1 egg yolk
• 200 g marzipan

1. Mix the dried rum and rum together in a small bowl. Let the dried fruit soak in the rum for minimum 2 hours or night over.
2. Weigh the remaining the ingredients (not the dried fruits) directly into the mixing bowl of the stand alone mixer. Keep salt & sugar away from the yeast.
3. Place the bowl on the stand-alone mixer.
4. Start knead the dough at speed 1 for 8 minutes.
5. Afterwards increase the speed to 4, knead for 2 minutes. Check the consistency of the dough. If it is not OK, when knead it at speed 4 for another 2 minutes. Again check the consistency. If needed, knead again for 1 minute and when check consistency of the dough.
6. Let the dough raise in the mixing bowl for 1-2 hours.
7. After the first raising add in the soaked dried fruit, knead the dough until the dried fruits are evenly distributed. 
8. Heat up the oven to 180'C.
9. Divide the dough into two parts.
10. Covered a baking tray, approx 15-20 cm on each side with baking parchment.
11. Roll out one dough portion into a shape fitting to the baking tray. Place the dough into the baking tray.
12. Roll out the marzipan to the same shape as the baking tray. Use icing sugar for dusting of the marzipan, when rolling it. Place the marzipan layer on top of the dough layer.
13. Roll out the second dough portion to the same shape as the baking tray. Place the dough layer on top of the marzipan layer.
14. Let the stollen raise for another 20-30 minutes.
15. Bake the stollen at 180'C in the middle of the oven for approx 25 minutes, until the cake is golden brown.
16. Cold down the stollen.
17. Cut the stollen into smaller pieces, Before serving you can dust the stollen bites with icing sugar.