This fun giveaway has ended now, but we loved making these pretty cookies so much that we thought we’d share it via our blog! For the holiday season we collaborated with Benefit Cosmetics to create a cute Mrs Claus cupcake tutorial for everyone to re-create at home. Alongside this we also held a giveaway. One lucky #Benebabe won a set of our exclusive Benefit cookies along with Benefit Cosmetics’ complete BeneBrow collection via Instagram! Amazing right?
Exclusive festive cookies for Benefit Cosmetics!
Our brief for these cookies was… Benefit, pink and festive! No problem! We sketched out ideas for gingerbread house inspired Benefit shops with different doors, windows and Christmas decorations. In the end we decided to keep it simple with a snow laden roof (glittery… of course) studded with snowflake sprinkles, hot pink doors, silver windows, a little holly and vintage inspired shop awning hand-piped with the Benefit logo! When it came to colour we stuck to the classic Benefit colours of pink and silver!
Of course we didn’t stop there! This pretty Benefit parlour needed some added sweetness! Sticking with our festive theme we created a large white snowflake adorned with sequin sprinkles and glistening mini snowflakes. For a little added glam we painted edible lustre on top. We then baked and decorated some fun gingerbread snowball cookies! These were simple small circles iced with white fondant and decorated with more mini snowflakes and sequin confetti sprinkles. Finally, we created some glittery star shaped cookies painted with edible silver (totally inspired by their vintage-esque packaging) and indented with tiny star shapes! Nice and sparkly… perfect for the holiday season.
Flavour wise, we used our classic go-to gingerbread cookie recipe which we LOVE. It just isn’t Christmas until these are made. Plus, they’re the perfect festive cookie to have with a huge mug of hot chocolate or seasonal flavoured coffee!
Yay! It was Krystle’s 31st birthday 25 March and she got a cake! We seriously hardly ever get any form of cake to ourselves, which sounds crazy given what we do for a living right? For the past two years, however, we have been so busy that we’ve not had the time to create a birthday cake for Krystle’s big day. This year, however, we managed it. Isn’t it a beauty too? Read on to find out more about our cute little bee studded creation!
Navy and blush peony cake with gilded bees!
This cake didn’t take long to design. A few inspirations behind it included Ralph Lauren‘s classic navy, white and gold colour palette and Alex Monroe‘s stunning nature inspired jewellery. Both of which we happen to own a lot of (uh oh). Krystle has always had an obsession with bees so that was a definite starting point too. Plus, we’ve discussed on and off creating a design that was covered with golden painted bees and bugs disappearing underneath heavy florals. In the end all of the elements for the cake, cupcakes and cookies fell together.
The matching cupcakes were super cute! They’re all Madagascan vanilla cake filled with Sicilian lemon curd and lemon oil infused buttercream. Each one was flat iced with blush or navy blue fondant / sugar paste before the details were added on top! We crafted ‘mini’ pale pink peonies with fluffy stamens and golden pistol centres to attach onto the blue iced cupcakes. The blush covered ones featured lots of small gilded bees!
Note: For adding wire florals into cake Safety Seal is amazing. It coats and seals all inedible items with a food safe wax. Yay! No picks in sight!
The hand-crafted sugar florals on the cake include… pink open peonies, white gardenias, fondant blackberries, blueberries, eucalyptus sprigs, emerald green peony leaves and pale grey berries!
Last but not least, the flavour inside was… Peanut butter Twix! Yup. Our chocolate cake filled with salted caramel sauce, chopped Twix bar pieces and a marbled peanut butter and Belgian milk chocolate buttercream then smothered with a Belgian dark chocolate ganache before being iced.
There’s now just 2 weeks until Christmas everyone. Two weeks. 14 days! Crazy right? It doesn’t feel too long ago that our 100 days countdown began (yes we do that). Anyway, we’ve had some fun festive recipes and tutorials on our blog so we thought we’d create a quick round up of our favourite and most popular ones. We’re not done yet though. Oh no. There are still two more weeks after all… we’ve got a few more little things up our sleeves!
Our top 5 Christmas recipes and tutorials
01: Have a cute Christmas!
Make your own Candyland themed Christmas dessert table with the help of our adorable gingerbread character tutorial! You can create this little cutie to add to buttercream swirled cupcakes, or iced cakes. A few of these would even be great added to a gingerbread house or village. Want to create your own sweet little gingerbread character? Check out our tutorial!
02: Homemade luxury!
Adding a little extra oomph to hot cocoas or seasonal coffees doesn’t have to mean a splash or several of festive liquor. Whip up some homemade vanilla marshmallows with our easy recipe, pile them on top and wait for them to melt a little. It is amazing! You can fancy it up too with whipped cream, sparklers and even edible gold leaf!
03: Make it a-DEER-able!
Invite a few reindeer to the Christmas party! We created one a-deer-able (sorry) tutorial for a little fondant reindeer cupcake or cake topper. We love the golden antlers and of course the finishing touch of the tiny bow and fondant bell! Create eight, nestle them on top of a buttercream cake with a golden picket fence to create Santa’s reindeer enclosure. It’s bound to be an instant hit during the party season!
04: Everyone loves a classic!
Of course offering up the traditional gingerbread cookie ever Christmas is going to be a crowd pleaser. We love making them so this year we’ve posted up our go-to gingerbread cookie recipe! We’ve tried lots of different recipes and methods over the years, but this one was by far our favourite. We like our gingerbread fairly dark and with a good amount of spice so it was perfect for us. It’s also one of the best recipes for sturdy gingerbread houses too!
05: Everyone also loves a little twist…
Christmas is definitely cookie season. For anyone who doesn’t whip up trays upon trays of cookies on a regular basis a drawer full of cookie cutters may not exist in their kitchen. With this in mind we thought of putting together a cool recipe and tutorial on candy cane cookies that don’t need a cutter! Check out our Candy Cake Twist Cookie recipe here!
The festive season pretty much means that you can stuff yourself silly. Obviously, we take this seriously seeing as we whip up a frenzy of sweet treats for a living. One of the cosiest things about winter setting in is enjoying a hot cocoa… with as many cookies, biscuits, candy canes as you can manage! This week’s Christmas recipe is for pink candy cane cookies that don’t need any form of cookie cutter whatsoever. For anyone who doesn’t normally obsessively bake and ice cookies having huge drawers upon drawers of cookie cutters this recipe and tutorial is going to be pretty handy. Keep reading for our cute pink peppermint candy cane cookies recipe!
01: In a stand-up mixer cream the butter and sugar together with the peppermint extract or essence. Make sure to mix until just combined. If you over beat the mixture this can lead to misshapened over spread cookies whilst baking. Not a good thing!
02: Add in the egg and lightly mix. Again you don’t want to over mix your ingredients. You’re also going to be adding in the dry ingredients soon which will then mix in the egg a little more.
03: Add in the flour and set your mixer to a low speed. Combine until a dough forms. You don’t need to use the dough hook for this if your stand-up mixer came with one. We always use the simple paddle attachment.
04: When a dough has formed separate it into two halves. Set one half to the side and add some pink food colouring to the half left in your mixer before then mixing it on a slow speed until it’s lovely and pink (you can colour it red or green instead too).
05: Gather up both doughs and wrap each separately with cling film before leaving them to chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour and 30 mins. It’s OK if you have loads of other things to do and end up chilling the cookie dough for 4 hours to even a full day. We’ve never had a problem with this.
06: Whilst your dough is in the fridge you’ll need to preheat your oven to 180c/350f/gas mark 4.
07: When chilled remove both doughs from the fridge and knead them a little after taking out of the cling film. Flour your work surface (with plain flour) and roll out to a good thickness. For these cookies try to roll them to a thickness of 4-5mm each colour.
First roll out one colour dough and set it aside. Then roll out your other colour. When ready take one and lay i over the other dough before rolling both a little more.
08: Now you need to twist and shape them into candy canes! Take a sharp knife or a pastry cutter and cut off any ragged edges from your rolled out dough so that you’re left with a tidy rectangle or square. Then cut this piece into a series of long strips around 1 1/2cm wide each.
09: Pinch the strips of dough together along all sides so that both colours bind together.
10: Using a cake smoothing tool roll out the strips to form even ‘ropes’. You can do this by simply rolling your pinched strip of dough forward and backward with the smoother.
11: Now whilst working on your cookie tray gently twist your two toned dough to form candy cane-like stripes running up them! Try not to pick up your cookie dough. You can twist them with the palms of your hands. Roll one end of the cookie dough towards you and with your other palm roll the opposite end away from you.
12: Curl and arrange into candy cane shapes and place them in the fridge for 30 minutes to chill.
09: Once they’re ready and chilled you can put them in your preheated oven for around 6-10 minutes. Set your time to 6 minutes first and test them. To check if they’re ready poke one lightly. If the cookie stays dented then it needs to bake for a little longer. If the dent comes back up then they’re ready!
10: Leave to cool for around 1 hour and enjoy!
We like these cookies left plain, but if you want to add a little bit extra festive cheer why not drizzle with white candy melts and add cute sugar snowflake sprinkles? You can even dip them into melted chocolate and then sprinkle on crushed candy cane pieces!
One of the best and most exciting thing about the Christmas season for us is the day when we finally get to bake our own gingerbread cookies. It varies depending on our workload… sometimes we begin in mid-November or if we’re rushed off our feet the scent of spiced cookies doesn’t make it’s way through the halls until mid-December. This year we’re insanely busy, but to fit in our biscuit baking marathon around work we decided to offer up our classic go-to gingerbread cookies recipe! Check out our recipe below for some seriously amazing festive sweets!
Our classic gingerbread cookies recipe!
Ingredients needed…
215g light brown sugar
3 tablespoons treacle
3 tablespoons golden syrup
2 tablespoons allspice
2 tablespoons ground ginger
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
250g chilled salted butter - diced
560g plain flour (plus extra for dusting)
5 tablespoons room temperature water
01: In a saucepan on medium heat add the light brown sugar, treacle, golden syrup, all of your spices (allspice, ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg) with the 5 tablespoons of water. Gently stir until well incorporated.
02: Now lower the heat a little and piece by piece add in the butter and stir until melted. Melting the butter down can take a little bit of patience at this stage.
03: Add in the teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda. Be aware that your mix may expand or froth a little bit at this point. It’s OK if it doesn’t though. Remove from the heat.
04: Now you can pour your syrup-like mixture into the bowl of a stand up mixer once it has cooled down to around room temperature.
05: After pouring in your spice/syrup mix add in your plain flour and mix on a slow speed until a slightly sticky dough forms! Place in your fridge to chill for 2 hours at least.
06: Roll out your dough (around 5-6mm is a good thickness) onto a floured surface and cut out all your cookie shapes then place onto a lined cookie tray. Place back into the fridge for 3o minutes to chill and firm them up. This helps stop your cookies from spreading!
Tip!
Don’t worry if your dough is stiff and hard to roll out. If this happens just leave it for around 5 minutes at room temperature then knead it a little to make it workable.
If you want your cookies to have indented details in them (like our cute gingerbread biscuits) then do this now. For our gingerbread faces all we used was a small ball tool for the eyes and buttons and a scallop tool for the smiles.
Tip!
Try not to use greaseproof or parchment paper to line your baking tray as the heat tends to make the paper crinkle which will lead to wonky cookies! We use Silpat mats (make sure they fit your trays) to bake up all our cookies!
07: Pre-heat your oven to 200 degrees C / 400 degrees F / Gas mark 6 and bake for around 8-10 minutes.
Tip!
Here’s a super handy tip that we use every time to check if our cookies are done… gently poke / indent one of your cookies with a finger. If the dough rises back up and the indentation disappears then they’re ready. If not then try baking them for another 2 minutes before testing again.
08: Once removed from the oven set them aside to cool down before you decorate them (if you’re going to anyway).
Now you can enjoy your homemade gingerbread cookies… or get them ready for friends and family! To decorate each you can dip them in dark chocolate, royal ice them, add candy details or even use fondant to decorate. We love the idea of whipping up traditional gingerbread people, covering them with milk chocolate and using crystallised ginger pieces and crushed candy canes to decorate.
