Mini Lebkuchen Doughnuts for Christmas

Lebkuchen is a German biscuit-cum-cake, a bit like gingerbread, that is traditionally eaten at Christmas; they are easy to find in UK supermarkets but having also lived in Germany for two separate periods between the ages of 18 and 22 (both including Christmas) I became quite keen on them.

I thought about making some Lebkuchen at Christmas but didn't get around to it; instead I decided to make some baked mini doughnuts using my Wilton doughnut pan which I was going to flavour with gingerbread spices, but then remembered I had a small packet of actual mixed spices for Lebkuchen that a German colleague had given me a little while ago that I'd never used. So the doughnuts tasted of Lebkuchen and I glazed them with chocolate as Lebkuchen often are.

I used this pan and the Wilton recipe to make Halloween doughnuts last year though I found the batter really thick - possibly because my buttermilk had set quite thick in the fridge - so also added some milk, and switched the plain flour and baking power for self-raising flour as follows:

300g self-raising flour
175g caster sugar
175ml buttermilk
50ml milk
2 tbsp. butter, melted
1/2 x 15g sachet of Ostmann Lebkuchen gewurtz
to decorate: 100g plain chocolate

As an alternative to the ready made Lebkuchen spice mix, you could use:
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp coriander
1/4 tsp ground cardamon
1/4 tsp allspice

Preheat oven to 200C. Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl until you have a batter that is a dropping consistency.

Grease a doughnut pan - you could also try making these as cupcakes in a cupcake tin - and drop in the batter so each doughnut ring is 2/3 full. This quantity will make two batches of 10-12 doughnuts. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 10-12 minutes.

Allow to cool in the tin then turn out onto a wire rack. Melt some plain chocolate in a microwave or bain-marie and spread over one side of the doughnuts and allow to set.

I allowed myself to try a bit even though I'm supposed to be cutting out sugar - it is Christmas after all and I hoped that a few bites wouldn't hurt - and they were delicious, tasting a lot like lebkuchen!

Gingerbread Cupcakes and My Cupcake Toppers

As I mentioned when I posted about my Christmas cake, I was sent a selection of cupcake toppers from My Cupcake Toppers for review. You can order icing or rice paper toppers with pictures of anything from Christmas to Eid to baby shower, Disney princesses or football teams or even Breaking Bad, the TV show. Prices start at £1.20 for 12 standard rice paper cupcake toppers up to £6 for ones made of icing. As well as that, you can design your own for a bargain price of £2.70 for the smallest size - that's actually a very appealing idea! They even have an in-house design service if you are short of inspiration.

I decided to order a selection to try out the different rice papers and icing they are printed on. As you might have seen, I ordered a large 7.5 inch circular cake topper printed onto a thin sheet of edible icing, to go on top of my Christmas cake. I cut it out, removed the plastic backing and simply placed it on top of the cake - perfect!

I then ordered a set of 12 Christmas designs for cupcakes made of icing, plus some Family Guy toppers (I love that show) on premium rice paper, and some Lego Star Wars on regular rice paper. In both cases the rice paper was pre-cut which only costs a fraction more, but gives a much more professional finish than taking a pair of scissors to a sheet of rice paper yourself.

Did you know the reason why rice paper toppers sometimes curl up when you put them on cupcakes? It's to do with the moisture in the icing, so you are better off waiting until the icing has hardened but is still ever so slightly soft, so you can press on the topper.

What's interesting though that is when I (*accidentally* - ahem) put the rice paper toppers on while the icing was still too wet, the standard rice paper topper did curl at the edges while the premium topper - which is noticeably thicker - didn't.

 

I was then able to flatten the Lego Star Wars topper when the icing had set a bit. Both toppers were larger than I was expecting and worked really nicely, and didn't taste of a lot but I wasn't expecting them to!

 

The Lego Star Wars cupcake is just the thing to eat when you are opening the next window on your Lego Star Wars advent calendar!

Finally I had some trouble when it came to the icing toppers. The icing discs were printed on a plastic sheet but unlike with the large cake topper I couldn't peel off the backing plastic. I spent ages picking at the edges wondering why they weren't coming off, then decided to contact the company. The My Cupcake Toppers website advises contacting them via Facebook which I did and I was pleasantly surprised - given it was in the evening - to have a reply just a couple of minutes later.

They told me what to do and also informed me that the instructions were on their website and on the back of the delivery note. I had already looked at the FAQ on their website and went to the 'cutting' section but this is about buying the topper discs cut out already; I totally missed the 'instructions' section further down, and I would never have thought to take the address label off the front of the envelope and check for something printed on the back!

The instructions, once I had them, were easy to follow even if they did surprise me, as I've never done this before. You need to dry them out in a cool oven (50-60 degrees C) for 5-10 minutes and they will peel off.

I really liked these because they stay stiff and flat and look really professional. They are quite big, taste nicer than the rice paper and I really liked the set of Christmas designs that I chose.

So here is the recipe for the gingerbread cupcakes themselves, which comes from a book called Celebration Cupcakes, byTamara Jane.

To make about 18-20 large cupcakes, you need:
300g plain flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp mixed spice
150g butter, softened
400g caster sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
100g finely chopped crystallised ginger
160ml sour cream

For the buttercream:
250g butter, softened
500g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence


Preheat oven to 170C, place cupcake cases in two muffin tins.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, ground ginger and mixed spice.

In another bowl cream the butter and the sugar and mix in the sugar. Beat until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs, beating the mixture after you add each one, then fold in half the dry ingredient, half the chopped ginger and sour cream, and mix well. Then fold in the rest of the flour, ginger and cream.

Spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases and bake for 20 minutes. Allow to cool.

To make the buttercream, beat the butter and the icing sugar. Add the vanilla essence and mix in. Using a piping bag and a star nozzle, pipe swirls onto the top of the cupcakes. Top with cupcake toppers as shown if desired.

 



 

I'm sharing these with Treat Petite, hosted by Kat, the Baking Explorer, and Cakeyboi Stuart.

 

 

Thanks to My Cupcake Toppers for the products to review.

Edible Christmas Tree Decorations

I had some gingerbread mix left over when I made this gingerbread house so I decided to cut out a few extra Christmas trees and snowmen. I had the idea of hanging them on the Christmas tree with ribbon and I think they look really cute!

You could make any sugar cookie recipe but these gingerbread ones did taste really good; here's the recipe I made for the gingerbread house so it would make you quite a lot of cookies:

 

180g butter
125g brown sugar
300g golden syrup
500g plain flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp bicarb of soda


Melt the butter in a pan and add the sugar and syrup. Remove from the heat, add the dry ingredients and mix to a thick dough. Roll out on a floured surface and cut out the shapes on top of pieces of baking paper.
Make a small hole with the tip of a dinner knife or the end of a teaspoon handle to thread the ribbon through. Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes depending on size.

Allow to cool and push a skewer through the holes to open them out again if necessary if they have closed up a bit.
















Decorate however you like, with icing and dragees or sprinkles. Leave to dry then thread some ribbon through and hang on the tree!

I'm sending these to Treat Petite, hosted by Stuart at Cakeyboi and Kat the Baking Explorer.

 

I'm also sending this to Tea Time Treats, hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Jane at the Hedgecombers, as their theme is sugar and spice.

 

 

Christmas Chocolate Gingerbread House

My fiancé bought me a gingerbread house kit a couple of months ago as he knew I wanted to make a gingerbread house at Christmas, so giving me the set as a Christmas gift was too late. I used it to make a haunted Halloween gingerbread house but of course was going to make a Christmas one as well, and here it is!

I used the recipe on the back of the box again to make the gingerbread:
180g butter
125g brown sugar
300g golden syrup
500g plain flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp bicarb of soda

Melt the butter in a pan and add the sugar and syrup. Remove from the heat, add the dry ingredients and mix to a thick dough. Roll out on a floured surface and cut out the shapes on top of pieces of baking paper.

I found it impossible to lift the shapes without distorting them after they had been rolled and cut out which is why I did it directly on to the baking paper.

Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes and leave to cool - I had to do this in several batches.

I ran out of golden syrup though and had to use Tate & Lyle's chocolate syrup to make up the quantity, which worked fine and it gave the gingerbread a slightly chocolately flavour which was ideal because I was planning to decorate it with quite a lot of chocolate!

I covered a cake board in white fondant and stuck the walls of the house together while the fondant was still soft, which helped anchor the walls. I stuck each piece together with royal icing (icing sugar mixed with egg white) and for some reason it was easier than last time to keep it stuck together; it didn't take long until the house was dry.

I spread more of the icing on the walls and the roof to fix on the decorations, and put Cadbury's chocolate fingers on the side walls to give a log cabin effect. The thatched roof effect comes from using Nestle's Matchmakers.

I wanted to keep the rest of the decorations fairly plain for a rustic log cabin effect so just made a door for the front from some more chocolate fingers.

I also baked a gingerbread snowman and Christmas tree; I decorated the snowman with some of the white royal icing and used a cocktail stick dipped in gel food colouring to draw on the nose and scarf. I then tinted the rest of the royal icing green and decorated the Christmas tree, and stood them both up in front of the house.

I'm sending this to the Food Year Linkup, hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen, as Christmas is the perfect time of year for a gingerbread house!

Haunted Halloween Gingerbread House

Gingerbread houses are really cute, aren’t they – and actually a bit tricky to make, as it turns out!

 

For a few years now I’ve wondered about asking for a set of gingerbread house cutters for Christmas but then thought there was no point, as it’s something that people really make in the run-up to Christmas, not after. A few weeks ago my fiancé mentioned something about gingerbread and I explained why I’d never asked for one as a gift for the reason I’ve just explained, and we left it at that. Two days later a parcel from Lakeland turned up containing a gingerbread house kit! That was very sweet of him – one of the many reasons I’m marrying him J

 

He also had a great suggestion – that rather than just using the kit before Christmas, I make a haunted gingerbread house for Halloween. Of course, that way he gets more gingerbread, but I’m not complaining!

 

The Lakeland kit comes with instructions for making the gingerbread itself which was very easy to do. I was worried the mixture was a bit sticky but once I rolled it out on a floured board it was fine.

 

 

I cut the front and back of the house out first and they were so large I couldn’t get anything else on the baking tray, so I realised I was going to have to bake the gingerbread in batches.

 

Each piece only spread slightly when it came out of the oven and I used the cutters again after baking but while the gingerbread was still a little soft to cut off the excess again. I was worried that if I didn’t do this, the pieces wouldn’t fit together exactly. As it happened, they still didn’t fit together exactly! I don’t know how I ended up with such big gaps and whether it was down to the baking or the assembly. It held together and looked pretty much OK but there must be a knack to doing it perfectly!

 

Once I had left the house sections to cool, I made up some royal icing using egg whites according to the instructions on the house kit. It said to use 3 egg whites and 500g icing sugar which seemed a lot, so I used two egg whites, and was going to use two thirds of the icing sugar but ended up having to put in nearly another 100g of icing sugar to get it stiff enough. And it meant I had far more icing than I needed, so I suggest – since royal icing goes hard quite quickly – that you use 1 egg and reduce the other ingredients by a third and then make more if you need it.

 

 

I used a piping bag to apply the icing along the edges of the building sections. The assembly instructions were quite minimal and not that easy to follow – I have no idea how to stick the chimney onto the roof and could have worked it out I’m sure, but decided not to bother with the chimney! 

 

 
 

First you stick the walls to the cake board – I happened to have a black cake board in the cupboard which was perfect for Halloween – and then put the front and back on the house. Each time you have to leave it to set for about 20 minutes and use a cup or glass to keep the sides propped up. Finally we stuck on the roof – my sister was helping and I do think it’s easier with two people!

 

 

Once the house was set I added the doors and windows and decided to decorate the roof first. I had a packet of candy corn M&Ms and another of pumpkin spice M&Ms which I’d bought in America. Each packet didn’t quite have enough to cover the whole roof so I did one side one way and the other side another. I think the white, orange and yellow looks more like Thanksgiving colours than Halloween but never mind.

I made some ghosts out of giant marshmallows and black food colouring and made a path out the front from more M&Ms.

 

I had some Haribo Halloween sweets which I used to decorate the front of the house – you can’t see too well but they are ghosts, spiders and witches heads. I wasn’t sure that I liked the overall effect but wasn’t sure how else to decorate it – I think this would be good for kids but if you want a more professional look I wouldn’t use the gummy sweets. I have an idea for how to decorate the gingerbread house at Christmas which I think will be smarter so you will have to wait and see!

For my first ever gingerbread house I don't think this was bad at all, and it certainly tasted good!

I'm sending this to the Food Year Linkup, hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen, as it's Halloween!

 

Christmas gingerbread men... and santas... and cows!

Last Christmas my friend BakingAddict gave me this book, "Dress your gingerbread". It has a standard gingerbread recipe at the beginning, then loads of designs to decorate your gingerbread as different characters and animals, as you can see on the front cover.

I wanted to make some edible gifts at Christmas and decided gingerbread men were fairly festive, quick to make and would keep better than other things I could have baked. I also wanted to make the cow as my boyfriend's last name is pronounced 'cow' (though it's spelled differently). And while he's probably had a lifetime of cow-related jokes and novelty gifts, it's a new one for me, and I'm quite enjoying it!

I used a recipe for the gingerbread from the BBC Good Food website but had to adapt it slightly as I only realised half way through the recipe that I had run out of golden syrup - so I used a mixture of runny honey and black treacle instead!

So I made some gingerbread people and got stuck in decorating. It was more fiddly than I'd expected (aren't these things always?!) and as I wanted to use up odds and ends of icing, some of it wasn't as soft as it could have been, which made rolling out the sugarpaste a little tricky at times.

 

First of all I made some penguins: I spread a little buttercream on the gingerbread, and covered it with black roll-out icing. I used the same gingerbread cutter I'd used for the biscuit to cut out the icing so it would be the same size and shape. I made the white circle on the front and the beak from roll-out icing as well.

Next I decided to have a go at santa. Again I spread buttercream over the biscuit, so the roll-out icing would stick. I piped chocolate buttercream to make a belt, buttons and to mark the end of his trousers, and I used white icing for his sleeves and beard, and also made a little hat. He looks a little bit evil but I was baking about three things at once on Christmas Eve with my parents due to arrive any minute, so things were a little bit rushed!

And here we have a herd of cows. These were my favourite and quite easy to make. Again cover the gingerbread with a little buttercream and then place a piece of white sugarpaste on top to cover the whole biscuit. The black spots are just roll out icing placed quite haphazardly (at this point the black sugarpaste I was using was quite dry, as the packet had been open a while. Random question: what's the best way to store sugarpaste once it's been opened?). I happened to have a small amount of brown sugarpaste left as well, so used that to make the cow's face, and piped eyes and a mouth on in black. I also rolled a small piece of brown sugarpaste and bent it slightly to look like a pair of horns.

I packaged up a few of these and some other gingerbread that I had iced plain and put them in little bags as Christmas gifts - and I had quite a few spare gingerbread people that I didn't ice that I enjoyed myself :-)

Moo!