Recipe Eleven: Christmas Town

This post is part of the "Sweet Adventures Blog Hop' Festive Favourites.

Last year I was inspired to make Martha Stewart's "Gingerbread Town Square Cake".

That said when you look closely at the recipe and realise you're going to need three days, over 20 eggs and almost a kilo of butter it was easy to get disheartened about the whole thing. 

This year I decided to make the cake with the same basic premise, flavours and visual outcome minus the heart clogging, wallet emptying and time erasing process.

So here goes:

Gingerbread Facades:

2 1/4 cups of self raising flour

1 1/2 teaspoons of ginger

1 teaspoon of cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon of cloves

1/2 a teaspoon of nutmeg

95gm of butter

1/2 a cup of firmly packed brown sugar

1/4 cup of treacle

1 lightly beaten egg.

Process the flour, spices and butter until they look like breadcrumbs

Add the sugar, treacle and enough egg to bring the mix together

Turn onto a floured surface and knead until smooth.

Shape into a disk and refrigerate for 1hr. Pre-heat oven to 180C

Roll dough out between 2 sheets of baking paper until 3mm thick.

Cut out facade shapes (I found mine here)

Bake until just firm (8-10minutes)

Leave to cool completely & then ice with Royal icing.

Walnut Meringue Layers:

2 1/2 cups of walnuts lightly toasted.

1 1/2 cups of Pure icing suagr

1 cup of caster sugar

6 large egg whites.

Process your walnuts until fine.

Add icing sugar and 3/4 of a cup of your caster sugar.

Process to combine.

Whip your egg whites until soft peaks form.

Add remaining caster sugar one tablespoon at a time until dissolved.

Continue to beat until stiff glossy peaks form.

Fold walnut mix into the egg meringue.

Draw 3 18cm diameter circles on baking paper, turn the paper over and pipe out circles using the walnut meringue.

Bake for 2hrs, then stand in the oven with the door ajar for another hour.

Gingerbread Butter Cream

250gms of butter

3 cups of pure icing sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons of Ginger

1 teaspoon of cinnamon

1/2 a teaspoon of Nutmeg

Milk to texture.

Whip the butter until pale, gradually add icing sugar.

If your mix becomes to stiff add a splash of milk to bring it back to the right consistency.

Beat in spices.

Whip 250mls of Cream.

Assembly:

The layers are assembled like this:

Meringue, buttercream, meringue, buttercream, meringue.

Then using remaining butter cream, frost the edges as best you can and stick on your facades.

Put your whipped cream on the top of the cake and spread.

Sprinkle the cream with cinnamon and you're done!

MERRY CHRISTMAS

xx

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Recipe Three: Lemon and Pistachio Wreaths

To say lemon is one of my absolute favourite flavours ever in the entire history of the universe may be understating it a bit. 

Generally if its main flavour is lemon, I'll eat it.

If it doesnt have lemon in it...I usually add it...

Even in tiny amounts lemon gives food a really nice brightness that you just cant achieve otherwise...in my opinion anyhow.

So what makes this biscuit even better than being regular lemon is that under the tart glaze is a beautifully subtle lemon flavoured shortbread. This shortbread is made with almost 1 part wheat flour to 1 part corn flour which gives the biscuit amazingly light texture.
Add to this a sprinkle of lemons best complimentary flavour, Pistachio and your have one heavenly cookie.

Lemon and Pistachio Wreaths

1 teaspoon of Baking Powder
1/4 teaspoon of Salt

1 cup of Plain Flour

3/4 of a cup of Corn Flour

1/2 a cup of caster/superfine Sugar

2 large Egg Yolks
115gms of Butter

The zest of 1 Lemon

2 Tablespoons of Lemon Juice

1 teaspoon of Vanilla

1 3/4 cups of icing/confectioners sugar

Milk

STEP ONE:

Put butter and sugar in a bowl and beat on medium/high until pale and fluffy.

STEP TWO:

Mix in yolks, lemon zest and vanilla.

STEP THREE:

In a separate bowl sift together flours, baking powder and salt.

STEP FOUR:

Gradually add your flour mix (I did 1/3 at a time) until all combined. It will look like sand...

STEP FIVE:

Add milk, a very small dash at a time to bring the mix together, once it starts to come together form it into a disk, wrap in clingfilm and place in the refrigerator for half an hour.

Part Two:

STEP ONE

Pre-heat oven to 180C

Roll our dough between two sheets of baking paper to 1/4-1/8" thickness.

Put that in the fridge until hard.
Once hard, working quickly, peel the top sheet off and cut and transfer raw cookies onto the sheet you just peeled off. (I found it easier to cut the holes in the middle once they were transferred)

STEP TWO:

Bake for 10-12minutes or until very, very place brown on the edge.

Transfer to a rack (or in my case chopping board) and cool completely.

STEP THREE:

These cookies are best glazed the day they will be eaten so that they keep their crunch.

If you're not serving them today pop them in an air tight container until tomorrow.

STEP FOUR:

Get your 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and add them to your icing/confectioners sugar.

Mix until you get a treacle like consistency with no lumps.

STEP FIVE:

Peel the purplish, flaky skin off of your pistachios.

I pour boling water over them and let them sit for a few minutes, this way they mostly slip right out.

Chop nice and finely.

STEP SIX:

Either dip or spread the tops of your wreaths with your lemon glaze.
Next sprinkle with pistachios and leave to set.

AND YOU'RE ALL DONE!
Put them on a pretty plate or package them up and they're ready to go..

xx