Pink and Glitter

I will be the first to admit that I am way, way behind on updating this poor blog. Know that it is because I have been having a fabulous christmas time, Dear Internet, and I do so hope you have been too. As it is, most of the festive recipes will be going up in the new year, ready to be called upon next yuletide.

I make ganaches and truffles several times in a year, but since Christmas is a feast, it seems incomplete without them. That and they make lovely gifts. And, well, if you can make them look as festive as the season, well...

This year I made two different flavours of truffles; Milk Chocolate with a hint of cointreau, and White Chocolate with a hint of Forest Raspberry Brandy (A.K.A Magic Potion). That sounds terribly chic, doesn't it? Like most of my recipes, I wish they were more complicated, so I could pretend to be culinarily gifted. Ah, well.

This is the recipe I use, which seems to work with any chocolate.

Chocolate Truffles

180ml Double Cream
30g Unsalted Butter
230g-250g chocolate.

Regarding chocolate, before I go into method. The better quality the chocolate, the better the flavour. Belgian chocolate is particularly lovely. If using dark, go for something around the 70% cocoa solids mark. For milk, anything over 35% is going to be a bonus. For white, it really seems to be more about quality than content for flavour, but the belgian chocolate I used was 28% and is divine. For a bittersweet chocolate, I have used half dark and half milk too; you get the heady cocoa colour and tang, but it melts creamily away into sweetness. But then, I am a heathen, and I do so love candy-sweet white and thick creamy milk. Yum.

Whatever chocolate you are using, break it into pieces in a heat proof bowl and set aside.

Heat the cream and butter over a medium heat in a good pan. Once the butter has melted and been combined by whisking gently, bring to the boil. Take off the heat as soon as it has boiled, and pour it over the chocolate.

Leave the cream-chocolate bowl alove for a few minutes, then whisk it through. The hot cream will have melted the chocolate. When ready you with have an even, glossy, sumptuous chocolate ganache liquid.

If you wish to make boozy or flavoured truffles, this is the time to add your flavouring. For spirits, 2 tbsp will give it a hint, a fragrance and a slight taste. 4-5tbsp or so will give you a kick. For non alchoholic flavourings like vanilla, lemon etc, 1 tsp of extract should be enough. You can use lemon juice, but in my experience and basic kitchen technology, it has always curdled somewhat, yeilding a less smooth finish. If you do choose juice, you will obviously need more. The mixture pre-chill is completely palatable, so 'season' to taste. I would 'season' it a little too much, if you get me, because the flavour will lose edge as it cools.

Refridgerate for at least 4 hours, but prefferably overnight.

And that really is it. Once the ganache has set, spoon out teaspoonfuls and roll into balls in some sort of coating. For milk, dark or bittersweet chocolate, cocoa powder is a simple and classy finish. For white chocolate, you can achieve a similar effect with iciing sugar, or a blend of icing sugar and cocoa sieved together. I think white chocolate truffles are so sweet that the icing sugar can kill them somewhat, but that's jsut my point of view.

For more 'exciting' coatings, this year I used for my milk chocolates:

bittersweet melted chocolate
chocolate sugar strands
chocolate curls
chocolate sprinkles.

And for the white chocolates (which is where the title becomes apt):

various pink sprinkles
hundreds and thousands (non pareils) in pink and multicoloured themes
pink sugar strands
pink glitter sugar

There are no words for how festive these looked. In a cut glass candy bowl, they looked like shining baubles.

I must apologise for a lack of pictures in this post. I shall add some later. I am having a little camera difficulty at the moment. That and since a large number of these have been snaffled, I may have to make a whole new batch to photograph. What a pity... wink wink.

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

Christmas and the festive season means something a little different to everyone. Whether you are a perpetual winter bachelor or bacheloress, or someone who dives headfirst into gluts of quality family time, you will have some sort of ritual that comes in to play once a year; traditions that your play out, often as your parents played out for you too.

To me, something which is uniquely and absolutely Christmassy is the food. Sumptuous feasts aside, Christmas is the season of nibbles and canapés and sweet treats and cakelets. It is the season of baubles and trinkets, where no one can judge you on your frankly outrageous overuse of non pareils and what not.

I don’t know whether it is simply because I am a glutton, or because I am from eastern European stock (sometimes I believe the two are more than related) but Christmas to me just isn’t Christmas without baking; filling the besparkled and bejewelled house with spiced clouds of aroma that help defrost even the frostiest of unfestive humbuggers.

I bake pretty much everything in our house when it comes to Christmas. We often buy posh continental biscuits, and the obligatory tin of chocs, and real german pfeffernusse, if we can, but the house (as it should be at this time of year) is well stocked with homemade mince pies, lebkuchen, Christmas cake, brownies, sugar cookies, tarts, chocolates, petit fours, cheese savouries and pretty much any other festive recipe that tickles my fancy.

Money is tight this year, so my ingredients fund is tighter. Therefore, bakes are coming in dribs and drabs, but already my cranberry sauce is stashed in jars in the cold store. In the ’pantry’ cupboard I’ve stored cranberry and homegrown tomato chutney from the summer, and range of homemade spiced jams (perfect for making tarts for those who don’t like mincemeat, or Christmas presents). Last week I gleefully threw together my cranberry mincemeat (a faithful Nigella recipe I simple couldn’t do without) and mince pies (sadly now mostly gone- I make must knock up another batch!). This week I must resist the Christmas cake completely, ready for it be dressed up next week. More immediately I have planned a tart citron (which is rapidly becoming a speciality!) to appease my gluttonous but frosting hating brother, and a cranberry bake well (another Nigella I have discovered) in order to appease my a) adoration for cranberries, however terribly unbritish they may be, b) my love of almonds and c) my chronic, incurable sweet tooth. There is nothing like a festive twist on a traditional, sweet and filling pastry to chase away the winter blues.

However, most pressingly, and most Germanic of me, I must make up my first batch of Lebkuchen!

Though I’ve baked all my life, I’ve really come into baking blossom in the last few years. This also coincided with our local delicatessen no longer stocking traditional german biscuits at Christmas. I once travelled to Colchester and back for some, but really, that’s a little excessive, even for something so delicious as Pfeffernusse. I found, around this time, my Lebkuchen recipe, and I have loved it ever since. There is nothing quite so Christmassy for me as a hot steaming pot of honey and lemon for the mixture, and the joyous burst of spice; ginger, cinnamon, clove, allspice, nutmeg and black pepper, as they fill your lungs and heart, released when the batter is mixed, and more so when baked. Every Christmas Eve I bake a fresh batch of lebkuchen and sit up, watching terrible television, or sometimes more wholesome carols and services, surrounded by the Christmas lights as I ice them, ready for Father Christmas, and then my family, to enjoy.

When I say bake, it means just and only that. Lebkuchen, like many Christmas recipes, needs time refinishing, for the flavour to develop. As delicious as it is, it is not something to be rustled up in a couple of hours, or even really a day. I leave my dough in the fridge to develop for two to three days. The minimum, really, should be 24 hours after mixing, though I suppose a few hours would suffice. Not only does it allow the spices to infuse, but this dough is very wet compared with many biscuits doughs, and the time allows it to firm up at least a little. Also, this dough makes A LOT of lebkuchen! You could easily divide it into three parts, using one after a day and so on.

Lebkuchen

200g honey (I use a lovely local honey, but really any honey will do)
200g muscovado sugar
50g unsalted butter
Juice of a lemon
Zest of one orange and one lemon (if you only have clementines and they are being zest resistant, just squeeze out a little juice with whatever zest you manage to get)
2 free range eggs
550g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp cinnamon
2-3 tsp ginger (depends how hot you like your ginger biscuits!)
1/2-1 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4-1/2tsp mixed spice

To decorate:
Royal icing
Silver and gold balls and dragees, non pareils or really whatever you like.


In a large saucepan (large enough to be used as a mixing bowl later in the recipe), combine honey, lemon juice, butter and sugar over a low heat until the butter is melted and the sugar dissolved. This takes about 15 minutes, but stay with it to stir as it goes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool until lukewarm.

Zest the orange and lemon (I hate this part but it’s important for flavour) and whisk into the cooled honey-lemon mixture, along with the eggs.

Stir in all the dry ingredients (flour, bicarb, spices) bit by bit. If you’re fussy you can sieve or whisk the dry ingredients before adding, but I’ve never had a problem just stirring them in.

Spray the inside of a large plastic freezer bag with oil. Frylight is fine for this. Alternatively rub with some oil with your hands. Place the dough in the bag, squeeze out the air as best you can and twist to secure it. Chill in the fridge for as long as you are going to.

When you are ready to bake, preheat oven to 180/170 (which I believe is Gas Mark 4). Line baking sheets with parchment.

Roll out the dough as you like. Traditional lebkuchen are quite thick and puffy and slightly soft. If you like really crisp gingerbread, roll it to about 4-5mm thick. Otherwise, about 8-9mm is good, or you can thicker.

Cut out your desired shapes and place on your sheet. Small (>3cm in diameter) cookies will take only 7 minutes or so, but check at 5. Medium biscuits (around 5cm in diameter) will take 8-9 minutes. Larger biscuits or gingerbread house pieces could take as much at 12 or so. I would check small ones at 5, medium at 7 and large at 9. The desired colour when done is a light gingery golden, though even when browned as the thinner biscuits often get, they are delicious.

Can you tell which corner of my hellfire-powered oven is hottest?

Once cool, you can ice as you like. I either draw outlines or stars at each corner, and top with a dragee or silver/gold ball. On reindeer, however, I give them an eye, and either draw a saddle, or give them a my little pony style bum patch! If you want to use these as Christmas decorations, use a drinking straw to punch a hole prebake, and thread a ribbon through before icing, or once the icing has set (about 12 hours). You may need to reopen the hole a bit with a skewer because they do rise up a bit, but the biscuits are tough enough to take it. You can also make attractive stained glass cookies, or windows for a gingerbread house, by smashing boiled sweets, and placing them in holes cut in the cookies prebake. These melt in the oven and set as the biscuit cools to create a stained glass effect. Very attractive!

A hamper I made up as a gift. You can see the iced lebkuchen at the back. Unfortunately I overlooked taking a picture before I packed them!