25. Gingerbread Sleigh

What is a more quintessentially Christmassy bake than a gingerbread house? With all the windows and roof tiles piped on with care, the roof dusted with icing sugar snow, chocolate fingers lining the doorway, maybe even some sweets as Christmas decorations.

I didn’t do that.

Who has time to make a house? Why not a sleigh that I could fill with “presents” (read, chocolates) instead? I cut out my own stencils from sheets of A5 paper, so it wasn’t huge, but I didn’t really want it to be, as I had to transport it up North.

Honestly, was pretty pleased with how this turned out, and the gingerbread is thoroughly tasty. Even after a few days sat holding chocolates. My only issue was that it was so pretty I didn’t want to break into it!

Merry Christmas!

Makes 1 gingerbread… whatever you like really. Only a small one though!

Ingredients

• 125g butter

• 100g demerara sugar (or other brown)

• 4 tbsp golden syrup

• 300g plain flour

• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

• 3 tsp ground ginger

• 1 tsp cinnamon

• 1 egg white

• 200g icing sugar

• 50g cocoa powder

• 100g white chocolate, melted (optional)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.

2. In a pan, melt the butter, demerara sugar and golden syrup together.

3. Mix the flour, bicarb, ginger and cinnamon together in a large bowl.

4. Pour the melted wet ingredients into the flour bowl and mix well. If it doesn’t come together, add a splash of water. It should be quite a firm dough.

5. Make/cut out your stencils while the dough firms up a little and cools down.

6. On a piece of greaseproof/baking paper, roll out the dough to about 6-8mm thick. Cut your shapes out and remove the excess dough from the paper. Transfer the sheet of baking paper onto a baking tray.

7. Bake for 12-14 minutes until firm and the edges have darkened a little.

8. Allow to cool and firm up for a few minutes, and then using your stencil, cut around the edges again to make them neat. (I left this a little too long, so my sleigh wasn’t as neat as I would have liked.)

9. Allow to cool completely.

10. Prepare an icing bag with a medium nozzle, star shaped or plain, for the “cement”.

11. Mix together the egg white, icing sugar and cocoa powder in a bowl, to a smooth paste. Fill your piping bag with this and pipe down the edges of your gingerbread pieces to stick them together.

12. As you assemble your gingerbread house/sleigh/city, use a bowl or kitchen utensils to prop up the pieces as you go, as the icing will not set immediately.

13. Once your house/sleigh/whatever is completely set, you can decorate with melted chocolate or anything else you like!

21. Eclairs/Profiteroles

Pastries at dusk are the first three words that come to mind when I think of eclairs. When I was younger, Mum and I used to buy a two pack of eclairs from Sainsbury’s to play “Pastries at Dusk”. This was not a complicated game. We would sit at the table, with one eclair each and see if we could finish it faster than the other without licking our lips. I nearly always won. In hindsight, the licking your lips thing is only hard if it’s a sugared doughnut, but that didn’t stop the fun. I loved pastries at dawn with Mum, and have loved eclairs longer than that. So when we made eclairs at school last week, and I knew I would have to practice them for my exam, I thought why not put up an eclair/profiterole recipe on the blog? This won’t be quite the same as the recipe I was given for the exam, and also won’t be the same flavours, but it’s close enough to get some practice in!

My eclairs unfortunately deflated a bit in the oven as I opened the door a little too early and let the steam escape, so I would recommend keeping the door shut and just peering in if you can, if your oven has a light. Still tasty though!

Makes 12-14 eclairs or roughly 30 profiteroles

Ingredients

For the choux pastry

• 65ml water

• 65ml milk

• 50g (1.75oz) butter

• A pinch of salt

• A pinch of sugar

• 75g (2.5oz) plain flour

• 5 or 6 medium eggs, beaten

For the crème pâtissière

• 250ml milk

• 4 egg yolks

• 45g (1.5oz) sugar

• 15g (0.5oz) plain flour

• 15g (0.5oz) cornflour

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• A knob of ginger, chopped (optional)

• A small banana, chopped (optional)

For the chocolate ganache

• 175g (6oz) dark chocolate

• 75ml double cream

• 15g (0.5oz) butter

Method

1. In a pan, melt the choux pastry butter and add in the milk, water, salt and sugar. Bring this mixture to a light boil and remove from the heat to add in the flour. Mix this well and then return to a medium-high heat for at least a minute, stirring continuously to dry it out a bit. It may start to lightly coat the bottom of the pan. Transfer the pastry to a bowl to cool.

2. Grease a baking tray with butter and leave to the side. Preheat the oven to 180C.

3. After your pastry has cooled to just above room temperature, start adding the eggs a small amount at a time. Once you have mixed in the first bit of egg so that it is all fully combined, you can add another bit of egg and repeat. This MUST be done in multiple steps or else the egg won’t mix in properly. You may not need all the egg.

4. Keep adding in the egg until you get to “dropping consistency”. To test for dropping consistency, get a decent amount of mixture on your spatula and hold it over the bowl to see how it drops. If it stretches and forms a V hanging from the spatula after dropping, you have reached the right consistency and do not need to add any more egg.

5. Put the mixture in a piping bag with a round piping nozzle. Pipe your eclairs or profiteroles onto the baking tray. Profiteroles should be about the size of a 10p, the eclairs should be about 12-15cm long.

6. Bake for 18-22 minutes until evenly golden brown. Don’t open the oven part way through! Take out and allow to cool on a wire rack. Not on the tray, they will stick!

7. Make the crème pâtissiere. Put the milk, vanilla and half the sugar in a pan and heat gently until steaming quite heavily, but not boiling. If you want to make banana and ginger cream like I did, add the banana and ginger to the milk to infuse it.

8. In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and rest of the sugar, then add in the flour.

9. Drain the steaming milk into the bowl, through a sieve if you added the banana and ginger, and whisk the mixture immediately so that the egg mixture doesn’t coagulate. Return the mixture to the pan and put back on the heat. Keep whisking the mixture.

10. Cook until the cream thickens and becomes elastic and glossy. It will “boil”, i.e. a bubble may come through the mix, which means it has cooked. Continue cooking until it no longer tastes starchy. You can only really do this by tasting it!

11. Put the cream on a plate or tray to cool and cover with clingfilm touching the surface to stop a skin forming. You can cool it at room temperature or in the fridge, but shouldn’t leave it in the fridge for too long or it will get too cold.

12. Make the ganache by melting the butter in a pan, adding the cream and bring it to a boil. Take off the heat and add in the chocolate in chunks. Stir until chocolate has fully melted and it is all well combined.

13. Once the eclairs/profiteroles have cooled, make small holes in the bottoms using a star shaped nozzle.

14. When the crème pâtissière has cooled to room temperature, or just above, scrape it into a bowl and whisk until smooth. Put in a piping bag with a nozzle the same size as you used to make the holes and use this to fill your eclairs/profiteroles. Scrape off any excess from the bottoms.

15. Dip the eclairs/profiteroles in the cooled ganache or spoon the ganache over.

16. Enjoy!

13. Spiced Chocolate Chip Muffins

Cinnamon is just SO GOOD. Whenever I want to make my bake a little more interesting, my hand reaches for the cinnamon just as easily as it reaches for the vanilla. Cinnamon is one of those flavours that a couple of people hate, and I simply don't understand at all. Other flavours that are bolder, e.g. ginger, coriander or aniseed, I can get why people wouldn't like them, but cinnamon is just so inoffensive. How anyone could dislike cinnamon I do not know.

With a couple of colder rainy days this week I decided that a spiced cake would help the cold feel cosy autumnal. There's a reason that pumpkin spice becomes a thing this time of year. There's nothing better than a little bit of spice to warm you up on a cold day! And I had chocolate chips to use up, so why not make them chocolate chip?

This cake also contains ginger and nutmeg to round out the spice profile, but I will undoubtedly be making my cinnamon cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting in the next couple months to help conquer the autumn! Keep an eye out for it!

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

• 6oz (170g) butter

• 6oz (170g) golden caster sugar

• 6oz (170g) self raising flour

• 3 eggs

• 1 tsp ground ginger

• 1 tsp ground nutmeg

• 2 tsp ground cinnamon

• 5oz (150g) chocolate chips, preferably dark

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.

2. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

3. Beat in the eggs.

4. Add in the flour and spices and mix until well combined.

5. Add in the chocolate chips and fold the mixture a couple times until they are evenly distributed.

6. Divide the mix between 12 muffin cases, until each case is about two thirds full.

7. Bake for 18-20 minutes until golden brown and when skewered, the skewer comes out clean.

8. Leave to cool a little, but best enjoyed warm to beat the autumn blues.

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