A couple of years ago, I sent round Rich Fruit Cakes wrapped in festively red muslin cloth, which were immensely successful (although I had trouble convincing a few people I had really made them!) so when the Molly-Porn arrived last month (aka the Lakeland Catalogue), I was inspired by their several pages of homemade christmas cookies and chocolates to do festive cookies for family and friends. I especially like the idea of these jewel trinket biscuits:
They featured a lot of great shaped cutter sets and silicone cases but when I went to one of their stores to buy, none of what I wanted was in stock yet, boohoo Lakeland. (That said I picked up 30 poinsetta cellophane gift bags for £2.50) So a good friend tipped me off about TK Maxx and I found not only did they have a massive range of christmas cookie cutters but they were a fraction of the price of Lakeland. Last week I found a version of Lakeland's star tree cookers in Tiger (the latest Scandinavian high street import) for just £1.
And the luck didn't stop there... I love the traditional Gingerbread house and this time of year, kits are everywhere, but I wanted to build them from scratch so I dismissed those. Then I found two great kits at TK Maxx containing just cutters which seemed like a great way to speed up the process and so this year's treats for the specials will be Gingerbread Houses after all (and filled with cookies!). I'm about to start testing out recipes, so if anyone has any recommendations, I would love to hear them.
And if you want to make your own Gingerbread House, check out this amazing blog, Sweetopia, to get your creativity flowing. I came across this site while looking for inspiration for icing my cookies, and when the royal icing tutorial featured owl cookies foremost, I knew I'd found the place! Who could resist these details:
More on the gingerbread houses here.
Looking forward to sharing pics with you and seeing what you have all been making! All the happiness of the season to you and yours.
Molly-Porn!!! Love it :-) I've been known to refer to it as my catalogue of dreams... (even if I had the funds for everything I'd want I dont have any space...)
ReplyDeleteIt is a book of dreams. It always amazes me that there is a gadget for everything in there, you'd need an enormous kitchen to store them all, many of them seem quite pointless and still I think "oh that's a really good idea"! hehe.
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