Every year in my family we make lots of christmas biscuits and delicious goodies to give to neighbours, teachers, family and friends. Everyone always loves them and homemade biscuits are always a fantastic personal gift. Here’s the recipes and some pictures, I hope you can get some inspiration and perhaps try it out for yourselves.
Spice Cookies
This is a recipe that my mum has had hand written down in a family cook book for years so I’m not sure where it was originally from but its makes delicious cookies!
Ingredients
- 60g Butter
- 1 cup Brown Sugar
- 1 Egg
- 60g Dark Choc Melted
- 2 Tbs Milk
- 1 1/2 cups Plain Flour
- 1 Tbs Cocoa Powder
- 1 Tsp Baking Powder
- 1 Tsp Allspice
- 1 Tsp Ground Cinnamon
- Icing Sugar for coating
Method
- Beat butter and sugar in a small bowl until softened
- Add egg and beat until light and creamy
- Stir dark chock and milk into butter mixture
- Stir in sifted flour, cocoa, baking powder, spices and mix well
- Refrigerate 3-4 hrs or until very firm (Note: this is very important otherwise its too sticky to roll into balls)
- Preheat oven to 180 deg
- Grease and line baking trays with paper
- Roll tablespoons of cookie mixture into balls
- Coat balls in icing sugar and place on trays
- Dont flatten the biscuits, place them well apart for spreading
- Bake for 20-25min or until lightly browned
- Cool for 5min then transfer to wire rack
Rocky Road
We adapted this recipe a bit from one we had in a book. We decided not to include copha and to replace the glacé cherries with jelly babies.
Ingredients
- ~450g Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate
- 1 Bag of Marshmallows
- 2 cups of Unsalted Peanuts
- 1 Packet Starburst Jelly Babies
Method
- Chop up all the fillings and place in a large bowl
- Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water
- Pour the chocolate over the fillings and mix together
- Place in a lined tray and put leave in fridge overnight or until hardened
Oreo Balls
This is a recipe I slightly adapted from kraftrecipies.com
Ingredients
- 2 boxes of Oreos (~40 cookies)
- 1 packet (226g) of Cream Cheese
- 220g of Dark Chocolate (1 block)
- Sprinkles/ Decorations
Method
- Place all the cookies and the cream cheese chopped into a blender or whizz machine
- Blend until smooth
- Roll into balls and place in the fridge to harden
- Melt chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water
- Using 2 forks pick up each ball individually and place into bowl of melted chocolate, move around until its fully covered and then place on a lined tray. Sprinkle with decorations
- Place in fridge until hardened
Hedgehog Slice
Another recipe I slightly adapted, this time from taste.com
Ingredients
- 2 x 250g Packets of Arnott’s Scotch Finger Biscuits
- 200g Unsalted Butter
- 1 cup Icing Sugar
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 400g Dark Chocolate
- 1 Egg
- 150g Hazelnuts
Method
- Place butter, sugar, vanilla and chocolate in a bowel over a saucepan of simmering water, stir until melted and smooth
- Remove from heat and whisk in egg
- Chop the hazelnuts and biscuits and add into chocolate mixture
- Pour into lined tin and place in the fridge overnight or until hardened
- Note: the recipe originally said to use some of the biscuits halved and to lay them down in-between two layers of the chocolate mixture, but the first time we made this recipe we did this and found that when we cut it up the slice broke apart as there wasn’t enough chocolate around the biscuit halves to hold it all together, so we decided to just break them all up this time and it worked better
Gingerbread
Another recipe from taste.com that we’ve used for years, it’s a good one! (Note: I doubled this recipe when I made it in these pictures)
Ingredients
- 125g Butter
- 1/2 cup Brown Sugar
- 1/2 cup Golden Syrup
- 1 Egg (separated)
- 2 1/2 cups Plain Flour
- 1 Tbs Ground Ginger
- 1 Tsp Mixed Spice
- 1 Tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
- 1 cup Icing Sugar
Method
- Preheat oven to 180deg
- Using an electric beater, beat the butter and sugar in a bowl until pale and creamy
- Add golden syrup and egg yolk, beat until combined
- Sift the flour and stir in with ginger, mixed spice and bicarb
- Lightly flour a bench surface and turn out the dough, knead until smooth
- Cover with plastic and place in fridge for 30min to rest and harden
- Roll out dough on floured surface and cut into desired shapes
- Place shapes onto a lined baking tray and bake for 15min or until golden brown
- Ensure the biscuits are cool before decorating
- To make the icing use an electric beater to beat egg white into soft peaks, gradually add icing sugar and continue beating
- To decorate you can colour the icing if you like and use what ever lollies you like
Macadamia Choc Chip Cookies
In our family these are known as ‘Cousin Alice’s Cookies’, I’m not sure where she originally found the recipe, but here it is.
Ingredients
- 250g Butter
- 1 cup Castor Sugar
- 1 cup Brown Sugar
- 2 Eggs
- 3 1/2 cups Self Raising Flour
- 400g Dark Choc
- 1 cup Macadamia Nuts
Method
- Preheat oven at 150-160 deg
- Use an electric beater to beat butter and sugars together
- Add eggs and mix
- Add flour in portions until all combined
- Add chocolate and nuts chopped
- Roll into small balls and flatten slightly
- Bake in oven for 10-15min or until lightly browned
Packaging it all up
This is just one of the boxes I packaged up to give a group of people as a christmas present this year. I think this is a fantastic gift for those who have a sweet tooth and its all homemade which I think people really appreciate.
Travels and Snaps 