Lemon Iced Gingerbread

Another holiday favourite.... actual gingerbread either on it's own or I decided to shake it up a bit and pop a bit of lemon butter icing on top... delicious :) Ask Orla!! x

Recipe
150g butter, 200g golden syrup, 200g treacle, 125g dark muscovado sugar, 2tsp grated ginger, 1tsp ground ginger, 1tsp ground cinnamon, 1/4 tsp ground cloves, 1tsp bicarb of soda(dissolved in 2tbsp warm water), 250ml full fat milk, 2beaten eggs, 300g plain flour
GAS 3 or 170C
Grease sides and line a dish 30X20X5 Cm

• In a saucepan over a low heat(it burns quickly!), melt butter, sugar, syrup, treacle, gingers, cinnamon and cloves.
• Take off heat and cool slightly, mix in the milk, beaten eggs, and dissolved bicarb
• Sift the flour into a large bowl and pour over the liquid ingredients, beating until well mixed.**It'll be a very liquid batter.
• Pour into tin and bake for 50-60mins, keep an eye. Until it is risen and firm
• Cool in the tin! Ice if you like or don't ice if you don't like :)

Lemon Butter Icing
200g icing sugar, 100g butter, grated lemon zest and 1tbsp lemon juice
Beat together

Baileys and White Chocolate Cupcakes....MMMMM

I think white chocolate and Baileys is a match made in heaven :) the cupcakes are yoghurt cupcakes, super moist, sweet and oh so nice. I tried so hard to make Snow White butter icing, I ended up using a white shortening in place of the butter, clear vanilla extract but the baileys still added a creamy tint.... still though they turned out really well!

Recipe
115g butter, 220g caster sugar, 1 egg, 250g flour, 5g baking soda, 2g baking powder, 175ml natural yoghurt, 60 ml melted white chocolate

Icing

normal a ratio of 2:1 sugar to butter, but the shortening demands you use 10% less than the recipe

so...

200g icing sugar, 90g shortening, 1/2 tsp clear vanilla and a good dash of baileys

I honestly don't think i ever fully follow a recipe for butter icing. Once i have the sugar and butter beaten together(2:1) i mix in flavours until it tastes right and if i need to add more sugar to firm it up i do... so play around with it

Happy Baking and Happy Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Christmas Cake!

Now every year I debate about whether to make a christmas cake or not, generally it's left there 'til March!! It's just one of those things thats forgotten about what with every other type of sweet and cake around the place :) But this year I made a cake (recipe adapted from Rachel Allens Bake) and it was a hit. The cake itself was light and moist, really full of fruit and whisky obviously! I'd say you'd get drunk after a few slices.. happy days! I'm not going to type the recipe as it involves many many ingredients but it's very simple to make. E-mail @ jennifer.omahony@gmail.com if you'd like it. I decorated the cake using almond paste and a ready to roll white fondant icing. I made holly cutouts and stuck them on, iced it and placed silver baubles around the outline.. it was loverly! And half of it was gone before Christmas Day... Madness!

Christmas is coming.....

So this weekend we switched on the Christmas lights at work, and they set up the Winter Wonderland in town and I came home Saturday evening to find my fantastic bauble loving Mother adorning every inch of the house with something festive, and I thought the only thing that could add to this would be the aroma of all things spice wafting through the house I decided make gingerbread cookies, and it was delish if I may say so myself! Here’s the tried and tested recipe and a couple o pics of my creations ….. Happy Baking!

Gingerbread Biscuits.

450g Plain flour (extra for dusting), 2 tsp ground ginger, 1 tsp ground mixed spice, 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda, 115g butter room temp (extra for tray greasing), 100g golden syrup, 115g light muscovado sugar, 1 egg beaten
Preheat the oven to 160C gas 3, and grease 3 large baking trays and away you go !

Sift the first 4 ingredients*all the dry ones!* into a large bowl. Place the butter, sugar and syrup in a saucepan over a low heat, stir constantly until melted together. Leave to cool a bit and pour into the dry ingredients and add the beaten egg too. (If the liquid is piping hot and you add the egg, it’ll scramble and believe me spicy floury scramble egg ain’t the result you’re going for!!) Mix all this together to form a dough which will be kinda sticky but it’ll firm up as it cools down.
On a lightly floured surface roll out the dough to 3mm thick and using your fav cookie cutters stamp out your biccies! I made one tree cuz i didnt have a cutter and i free hand cut it, which got old after the first one haha! I also made snowmen, angels and holly. Place the shapes on the prepped trays and re-knead any dough and cut until its all used up. If using edible baubles or currants etc for decoration press them into the cookies now, before baking. Pop them in the oven then, for 15 to 20 mins until firm and lightly browned.

Remove and leave to cool on the trays for a few mins, and transfer to a wire rack. Make sure they’re cold when decorating!

For the icing, I made up 4 little bowls white, black, green and red. You’ll need a piping bag, coupler and a small nozzle attachment. 100g icing sugar to 4tsp water usually gets the consistency you need, add more sugar if its too runny thou or a little more water if too thick (be light handed with the water!)

Pipe away using your own creativity, i piped around the edges just to outline, and using the different coloured icings i did the snowman detail.

Happy Baking xxx