Sweet and salty Christmas treat

I love making this traybake.  A few times The Team have even requested I make a double batch, so we can keep one, ha ha.  It really is that good.  Such a taste sensation of salty nuts and sweet chocolate....  Mmmm. A friend's sister is pregnant at the moment, and had fallen in love with a photo from my Facebook page of another traybake and had been craving it.  But I hadn't managed to locate any Reese's pieces for a reasonable price (£1.50 per 50g bag was a tad ridiculous I felt) so the friend chose this one for her.  I delivered it in one piece, and I believe it was cut and placed in a gorgeous Santa tin, to be given as a Christmas gift.  Oooh, what a lucky girl!

Truffle-style balls for Santa

Last year we made a wee treat for Santa, to go with his cheese and chutney sandwich (well, everyone else leaves out mince pies, and we thought he might fancy something different).  We decorated them with red glitter and sugar, and had lots of fun.  So this year, we did likewise using a recipe from Morrison's supermarket magazine (really sorry but I can't find the link for the recipe at all I'm afraid.  And I didn't keep it because I didn't like it much.  Serves me right for not keeping up to date with the blogging, if I was doing htis post in December I would have probably still had the recipe lying about somewhere for you) and decorated them with line sprinkles - I didn't like the taste much, but The Team did!  As did Santa  ;)

Despite their best efforts, the sprinkles didn't stick all the way around the balls - do you know why?  Is it just bad luck?  Not a big deal, as you can see they quite enjoyed cleaning up at the end.

Red Velvet is perfect for Christmas

Remember P and B who ordered the Red Velvet and Banoffee cupcakes?  Well, B's sister liked P's birthday cake back in the autumn so much that she ordered one for Christmas Day.  It was to be with cream cheese icing, and that needs to be refrigerated, so I couldn't do sugarpaste accents or decorations because they shouldn't be kept in the fridge.  So I went for those fabulous rosette swirls that make a cake look as inviting as a plump pillow (or is it just me who thinks it looks like you could dive right in??), with just a few white snowflakes and a sprinkle of silver glitter...  Merry Christmas gang!

Christmas cupcakes in winter-fun flavours

P and B fancied an end-of-school/Christmas treat, so asked for a dozen cupcakes in Red Velvet and Banoffee (spiced banana cupcakes with toffee buttercream icing).  I had bought some gorgeous icing toppers from Jade at The Cupcake Company, and was only too keen to use them and make decorations to coordinate.  You'll recognise them from the Teacher treats post, as they were done soon after.  

I had just recently visited my local TK Maxx store, here in Dundee, and bought myself some Jem bow cutters.  I've tried in vain to make bows free-hand, based upon watching a selection of YouTube videos, and despaired of ever doing them well.  Then I spotted the small bow cutter set at the store, and didn't think twice.  I was able to follow the instructions, and was really pleased with the result.

These decorations were really fun to make, and coordinated well with the vintage style toppers I planned to use on the Red Velvet cupcakes.  

The banoffee ones I did a little bit differently this time, as I had some toffee sauce leftover. 

They look pretty luscious, right??!  They got great reviews too  :)

Teachers need treats!

One of the local schools were having their Christmas shows this week, and a few performances were planned.  The deputy head got in touch, saying she'd tried some of our cupcakes and wanted to order enough for the whole staff, to boost their morale in the upcoming hectic week.  She wanted a selection of flavours and a traybake too, for mini nibbles.

No problem I said.  Then forgot to take proper photos.  Oops.  Ah well, the food should still taste good, right??!

What looks like a Christmas pudding but isn't?

Another meeting, another cake style.  This time it was a Christmas pudding cake, and again, I hadn't wanted to learn specifically for the design of cake but rather the skills involved.  She'd suggested an igloo cake (also somewhat Christmas-sy) but I felt this sort would help me better understand the creativity that could be shown in a bowl cake.  

I haven't baked a cake this shape yet either, so was happy to practice how to cover this one too (like the present cake, it was a simply sponge cake, layered with jam and buttercream).  Then in different coloured sugarpaste, we hand-cut the 'custard' spilling down.  Likewise the holly and berries, decorated to our tastes and just for fun.  The 'raisins' were done by painting onto the surface with brown food dye, ingenious!

Et voila, the cake that looks like a fruity Christmas pudding, but isn't!

Chocolate-covered pretzels? Sounds great

I had seen chocolate covered pretzels in my American cake group (online), and loved the idea of salty and sweet mixed together.  In fact, I think I may well have eaten some - perhaps bought in a small bag for a high price from somewhere like Marks & Spencer or the like...

Anyway, I was really keen to try them out, and bought some red and green Wilton Candy Melts especially, from my local Hobbycraft store, as they have the best price.  And lots of white chocolate too.  Can you see where I'm going with this?  Red, green, white... yep, Christmas was the look I was going for.  We even had red sanding sugar and white sanding sugar to give a little bit of sparkle to the edges.  I knew this would be an easy one to do with the girls, and had lovely images in my mind of a new Christmas tradition at Becca Towers.  They were really keen to get started too...

We did the white chocolate dip first, laying  them out on a tray covered in baking paper.  They weren't hardening quickly enough for the girls, so I popped the tray in the freezer to speed up the process.

We then went on to the coloured chocolate dipping.  You'll notice at this point how much the girls were involved.  I mean, obviously if it had just been me dipping the pretzels, the chocolate wouldn't have clumped so much in areas.  It would have had a much cleaner, neater appearance.  Yeah, right.  ;)

Before the final colour of chocolate dried, many were dipped in the sprinkles.  That was probably the girls' favourite part - apart from eating them of course!  Now, do you think they look Christmassy?  Or Italian?  

 I may need to source some red, white and green hundreds and thousands for next time...

Peppermint bark isn't from a tree...

I'd never heard of peppermint bark before.  I spent my youth in Australia, and now live in the United Kingdom (Scotland specifically for the last decade and more) and it just isn't heard of.  So I honestly figured it wasn't food, but some sort of tree-related item.  Or something.  But not food.

But guess what??!!  It's food - and it's delicious.  And easy to make too.  I am friends with a couple who run a company (that felt good to say) and I saw their video on how to make it.  For those of you who don't want to watch the 4 minute clip, here's the blog post...

After some discussion with other members of the company's Facebook group, we decided that in the UK candy canes would suffice in place of the peppermint crisp that ShopBakersNook.com sell.  They were a bit tricky to crush without them flying all over the kitchen, but easy enough.  Then once mixed into the melted white chocolate and spread out onto baking paper, they looked like this.

I wasn't sure how long to leave it to set, but it was quite solid after about 20 minutes.  I had space, so popped it into the fridge for about the same time again, et voila!!

I think the girls are gonna love this when they get home from school - and Mini-2 doesn't even like mint.  Just need to try it with milk or dark chocolate next, mmm yummy!