Every December, I try to come up with a new spin on a festive classic: the Yule Log. My first attempt was my Almond, Rosemary and White Chocolate Yule Log, which featured an almond sponge, filled with an amaretto cream filling, covered in a rosemary-infused white chocolate ganache and sprinkled with toasted almonds.

My second take was my Tirami-Yule Log, which was (you guessed it!) inspired by the flavours of a tiramisu. It was made up of a vanilla sponge, a coffee syrup (spiked with amaretto), mascarpone cream and grated dark chocolate.

This year, I took inspiration from our Christmas Day dessert from last year, which was the Spiced Clementine Cake from the Ginger Pig Christmas Cookbook. The cake is made with ground almonds and a small amount of cinnamon, allspice and cardamom are added to give it a little bit of festive flair. It’s topped with candied orange slices and served with crème fraîche.

Let me introduce you, then, to my Spiced Orange and Almond Yule Log!

Table of Contents

• Ingredients
• Making the Spiced Orange & Almond Sponge
• Making the Spiced Orange Syrup
• Making the Crème Fraîche Filling
• Assembling the Yule Log
• Decorating the Yule Log
• Recipe

Ingredients

To make this Spiced Orange and Almond Yule Log, you will need the following ingredients (it’s a bit of a long list, but stay with me!):

• Oranges

To make an orange cake, you need oranges! You’ll need orange zest for the cake and the crème fraîche filling, then you’ll need some freshly squeezed orange juice for the syrup. I recommend using unwaxed oranges for this recipe.

• Caster sugar

I’ve used golden caster sugar throughout this recipe, but you can use white sugar instead, if you prefer.

• Eggs

I always use large eggs for baking.

• Plain flour

Don’t be tempted to use self-raising flour here, or the cake will rise too much!

• Baking powder

A small amount of baking powder is added to the sponge to help it rise the perfect amount, so that it is light and fluffy, but still rollable.

• Ground cardamom

If you can find ready-ground cardamom, I recommend using that (just for ease). If you can’t find it (and it can be hard to source sometimes), you can use the whole pods: just grind the seeds in a mortar and pestle/spice grinder until you have a fine powder.

• Ground cinnamon

A classic festive spice, ground cinnamon is readily available in supermarkets.

• Ground allspice

The final of the three spices added to the cake batter, allspice adds a lovely, festive warmth.

• Ground almonds

Ground almonds add a sweet, nutty flavour to the cake, while also helping to make the sponge super flexible, so it’s easier to roll without getting cracks!

• Fine sea salt

As with most baked goods, a small amount of salt is added to the cake batter to enhance all of the other flavours.

• Almond extract

Just to amp up the almond flavour even more!

• Vanilla extract

You won’t taste the vanilla flavour (only a very small amount is added), but it helps to counteract any potential eggy-ness that can come with this type of foam-based cake.

• Cardamom pod

A whole cardamom pod is bashed and added to the orange syrup to infuse it with some extra festive spice. It’s best to use the whole spice here, rather than the ground stuff, because it keeps the syrup nice and clear.

• Cinnamon stick

Similarly to the cardamom pod, a small cinnamon stick is added to the orange syrup to add even more festive flavour, without affecting the appearance/texture of the syrup.

• Crème fraîche

Crème fraîche is a classic pairing with any orange and almond cake and it makes the perfect filling for this Yule Log: light and fresh, but still rich and delicious.

Making the Spiced Orange & Almond Sponge

The process for making this sponge is super similar to making the almond sponge from my Almond, Rosemary and White Chocolate Yule Log (just with some added orange and spice!).

The first step is to grease and line the tin. You’ll need a 23 x 33cm Swiss roll tin for this recipe. Use a small amount of sunflower (or other flavourless) oil to grease the tin, then line it with baking paper. Set this aside, then preheat the oven to 180°C (conventional oven, not fan-forced).

Now, it’s time to make the sponge batter. Place the sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer, then zest the orange directly over the top, so that all of the essential oils fall down into the bowl and you get more flavour from the fruit.

Use your fingers or the back of a spoon to rub the zest into the sugar. This helps to make sure it is evenly distributed and releases even more of the essential oils, so you’ll get even more flavour!

Add the eggs to the orange-ified sugar, then, using the whisk attachment, whisk on high speed until the mixture has become pale, fluffy and tripled in volume.

You want it to be at the ‘ribbon stage’, where you can lift the whisk and draw a figure of eight with the ribbon that falls off it.

While the egg mixture is whisking, prepare the dry ingredients. Sift the flour, baking powder, spices and salt together into a separate bowl.

Then whisk in the ground almonds. Set the dry ingredients aside for now.

Once the egg mixture is ready, add both extracts (almond and vanilla) and whisk briefly to incorporate them.

Remove the bowl from the stand mixer and sprinkle over the dry ingredients. Scattering the ingredients over the top, rather than dumping them all in in one spot, helps to distribute the weight a little more, so you are less likely to deflate all of the air you’ve just whipped into the eggs!

Using a balloon whisk or a large metal spoon, fold the dry ingredients into the egg mixture until no streaks of flour remain. I like to use a whisk for this, because I think it works better, but you can use either utensil. The aim is to retain as much air as possible at this stage.

Pour the sponge batter into the prepared tin and use an offset spatula to spread it out gently into an even layer.

Bake the cake in the middle of the preheated oven for 15-17 minutes, until it is risen, golden and just about firm to the touch.

While the cake is baking, spread a piece of baking paper onto a clean work surface. Make sure the baking paper is slightly larger than the size of your cake tin. Sprinkle 2 tbsp of caster sugar all over the baking paper (this will help prevent your sponge from sticking to the paper when you roll it up).

Once the cake has come out of the oven, leave it to cool in the tin for 1 minute, then flip it out onto the prepared, sugared baking paper.

Peel the baking paper layer off the bottom of the cake and discard it, then tightly roll up the sponge, along with the baking paper underneath, starting from one of the shorter ends. Doing this while the sponge is still warm means you’re less likely to get any cracks when you roll it back up later!

Set the cake roll aside to cool completely before filling it.

Making the Spiced Orange Syrup

To add even more flavour to the cake, we’ll be soaking it in a homemade, orange syrup.

To make the syrup, place the orange juice, caster sugar, one cardamom pod (give it a little bash with a rolling pin/the flat edge of a knife first, to help it release its flavour!) and one small cinnamon stick into a small saucepan.

Place the pan over a medium-low heat and swirl it gently every now and then, until the sugar dissolves. Leave the syrup over the heat to bubble away gently, until it has reduced by about 1/3 (about 3-5 minutes).

Remove the pan from the heat and strain the syrup through a heatproof sieve to remove the cardamom pod/cinnamon stick. Set the syrup aside while you make the filling.

Making the Crème Fraîche Filling

This filling is SO easy to make! All you need to do is place the crème fraîche into a bowl, along with the orange zest. Just like with the sponge, I like to zest the orange directly over the bowl so that all of the essential oils fall in and give the filling extra flavour.

Then, just stir everything together. That’s it!

Assembling the Yule Log

Once you have your rolled and cooled sponge, orange syrup and zesty crème fraîche ready to go, it’s time to assemble the Yule Log.

Carefully unroll your sponge cake, using the baking paper to help you if needed.

Use a pastry brush to brush the orange syrup all over the surface of the cake.

Then spread the crème fraîche filling right over the surface of the cake, directly on top of the syrup.

Now, it’s time to roll! The cake should want to roll back up, because it cooled in that position, so just go slowly and roll it back up around the filling, making sure the roll is quite tight, as this will give you the most defined swirl.

Once your cake is all rolled back up, breathe a sigh of relief! You’ve done the hard bit! Don’t worry too much if you get any cracks: it won’t affect the flavour in any way (and icing sugar can hide a multitude of sins!).

If you want to, use a dry pastry brush to gently brush off some of the excess caster sugar from the top and sides of the cake (though I don’t particularly mind the extra crunch!).

Transfer your cake to a serving plate, then it’s time to decorate it!

Decorating the Yule Log

I’ve kept the decoration really simple for this Yule Log: just a generous dusting of icing sugar all over and some homemade Candied Orange Peels placed on top, right down the centre.

I’ve just placed the orange peels on top, but do be aware that they are likely to fall off if you need to transport the cake anywhere! If you want to make the decoration more secure, you might want to make some extra crème fraîche filling and pipe it down the centre of the cake, then you can stick the orange peels to the icing so that they don’t move around.

However, you can decorate this cake in any way you would like! If you really want to impress, you might want to cut a small slice off each end of the cake, to reveal the beautiful swirl inside.

Alternatively, you could make extra crème fraîche filling and use it to ice the outside of the log as well as the inside to give the log a snowy effect.

Once decorated, serve your Yule Log immediately, or store it in the fridge for up to 2 days.

Recipe

Print

Spiced Orange and Almond Yule Log

A spiced orange and almond sponge, soaked with a spiced orange syrup, swirled with a zesty crème fraîche filling and topped with a dusting of icing sugar and some homemade candied orange peels.

Course Dessert, Snack

Keyword almond, Orange, Spiced, yule log

Prep Time 1 hour hour 45 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Servings 8

Equipment

• 23 x 33cm Swiss roll tin

Ingredients

For the spiced orange and almond sponge:

• Sunflower oil, for greasing (or other, flavourless oil).
• 80 g caster sugar, plus 2 tbsp for sprinkling.
• 1 orange, zest only.
• 4 eggs
• 50 g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground allspice
• 1 pinch fine sea salt
• 50 g ground almonds
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1 splash vanilla extract

For the spiced orange syrup:

• 1 orange, juice only.
• 1/2 tbsp caster sugar
• 1 cardamom pod, bashed.
• 1 small cinnamon stick.

For the crème fraîche filling:

• 300 ml crème fraîche
• 1 orange, zest only.

To decorate:

• Icing sugar, for dusting.
• Candied orange peels, (see Note 1).

Instructions

Make the spiced orange and almond sponge:

• Grease the Swiss roll tin lightly with oil and line with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 180°C (conventional, not fan).
• Place the 80g of sugar and the orange zest into the bowl of a stand mixer. Rub the zest into the sugar using your fingers/the back of a spoon until evenly distributed.
• Add the eggs and whisk on high speed until pale, fluffy and tripled in volume (the 'ribbon stage').
• While the eggs are whisking, sift the flour, baking powder, spices and salt together into a separate bowl, then whisk in the ground almonds. Set aside.
• Once the egg mixture has tripled in volume, add the almond and vanilla extract and whisk again briefly to incorporate.
• Sprinkle the dry ingredients over the egg mixture, then use a balloon whisk or large metal spoon to fold them in, until no streaks of flour remain.
• Pour the sponge batter into the prepared tin and use an offset spatula to spread it out into an even layer. Bake in the preheated oven for 15-17 minutes, until risen, golden and just firm to the touch.
• While the cake is baking, cut a rectangle of baking paper slightly larger than the Swiss roll tin. Spread it out on a clean work surface, then sprinkle over the remaining 2 tbsp caster sugar.
• Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 1 minute, then flip it out onto the sugared baking paper. Peel the baking paper off the bottom of the cake, then carefully and tightly roll the warm cake up into a log. Leave the rolled cake at room temperature to cool completely.

Make the spiced orange syrup:

• Once the cake has cooled, make the orange syrup. Place all of the ingredients into a small saucepan and set over medium-low heat. Swirl gently as the sugar dissolves, then allow to bubble away until the syrup has reduced by about 1/3.
• Remove the syrup from the heat, then strain it through a heatproof sieve to remove the spices. Set aside while you make the filling.

Make the crème fraîche filling:

• Place the crème fraîche into a bowl, then add the orange zest. Stir until combined.

Assemble the Yule Log:

• Carefully unroll the cooled sponge. Use a pastry brush to brush the syrup all over the surface of the cake.
• Spread the crème fraîche filling over the cake, right on top of the syrup, then carefully roll the cake back up into the log shape. The tighter you are able to roll it, the more defined your swirl will be.
• Transfer the whole roll to a serving platter, then dust with icing sugar. Arrange the candied orange peels on top, right down the centre, then serve.
• The Yule Log is best eaten immediately, but can be stored in the fridge for up to 2 days.

Notes

1. You can find my recipe for Candied Orange Peels here.

When I was little, one of my most prized possessions was my Pick & Mix Sweet Shop. It had lollipop holders, trays for assorted sweets and even a little weighing scale in the centre: I loved it. Unfortunately, I never actually had enough sweets at any one time to fill my sweet shop, so it sat in my room, beloved, but rather depressingly low in stock.

Every Christmas, I make quite a few festive sweets and treats for my whole family to enjoy. It occurred to me recently, while preparing for the festive season, that I am a grown adult with free will, so I decided to pay tribute to my Pick & Mix Sweet Shop and make my own homemade, festive, sweet shop this year, filled with all of my family’s favourite treats (unfortunately, I cannot charge my family members for the sweets… it is Christmas after all… so take the term ‘shop’ with a pinch of salt!).

In today’s post, I’ll talk you through all of the equipment I used to set up this sweet shop and go through the 6 sweets that I made one-by-one, in case you too have an inner child with a sweet shop fixation that needs to be HEARD.

Let’s get into it, shall we?

Table of Contents

• What You Need
• The Sweets
  • Rocky Road Bark
  • Peppermint Bark
  • Cherry & Almond Chocolate Puddles
  • Toffee Popcorn
  • Pistachio Nougat
  • Christmas Market-Style Nuts
• Setting Up the Sweet Shop
• Final Thoughts

What You Need

There are only two things that are absolutely essential for making your own sweet shop: sweets (obviously!) and containers to keep the sweets in. However, if you want to go the extra mile, you can also use some fun, festive decorations and make a whole display out of it!

Most of the things I bought for this sweet shop were from Sostrene Grene, one of my favourite places to shop during the festive season. I’ve linked everything down below, but their stock does change up pretty frequently, so the specific items may not be available anymore. Hopefully, though, the links will give you an idea of what each product looks like, so you can find similar versions!

For my sweet shop, I used the following things:

• Sweets

I used homemade sweets for my shop, but you could also absolutely buy your favourite treats and decant them into pretty jars to make it easier (but just as fun and special!).

• Jars

You’ll need one jar/container per sweet. I tried to source a variety of different shapes and sizes: I already had the two square jars and I bought the others from Sostrene Grene (links below).

Large jar with wooden lid.

Small jar with wooden lid.

Large round jar.

Small round jar.

• Tongs

This was a.. slightly frivolous purchase and by no means necessary, but, when I was buying the jars from Sostrene Grene, I saw these gold tongs and I thought they’d be so cute (and useful!) for getting the treats out of the jars. They actually work really well for the job, so I think it paid off!

• Faux pine garland

This is a festive sweet shop after all, so I nestled the jars in amongst this faux pine garland.

• Christmas lights

You guessed it, these gold star fairy lights are also from Sostrene Grene! They’re wired, so I was able to coax them into the shape I wanted, weaving them around the jars with the garland.

• Knitted sweets

If you’ve been following along with Blogmas At Home this year, you might have seen that I made these knitted sweets earlier on this month and I thought they’d make perfect decorations for this sweet shop! I just dotted them around the place, nestling them within the pine garland.

• Gingerbread Christmas tree

I haven’t shared my gingerbread undertaking for this year yet (don’t worry, it’s coming soon!), so I guess this is a bit of a sneak peak, but I feel like this sprinkle-coated, gingerbread tree fits the whole fun, sweet shop-vibe perfectly, so of course it had to feature!

The Sweets

I made 6 different treats for my sweet shop: Rocky Road Bark, Peppermint Bark, Cherry & Almond Chocolate Puddles, Toffee Popcorn, Pistachio Nougat and Christmas Market-Style Nuts. Because all of these sweets have pretty long shelf lives, I was able to spread the candy-making process out over a week, so I didn’t get too tired out (or overwhelmed by sugar!).

All of the recipes for these treats are available here on the blog. I’ll link to each one below, so you can make them yourself, if you fancy!

Rocky Road Bark

This Rocky Road Bark was a new entry to our festive treat list last Christmas and is a favourite of my sister-in-law!

It’s made with a 50/50 blend of milk and dark chocolate, mixed with crumbled digestive biscuits and topped with a scattering of mini marshmallows and raisins.

Find my recipe for Rocky Road Bark here.

Peppermint Bark

Peppermint Bark is the OG Christmas sweet in our household: my mum received a homemade version as a gift from her friend many Christmases ago and we loved it so much that I had to recreate it immediately! We’ve been making it ever since. In fact, it’s actually the first recipe I ever shared here on the blog!

The bark is made up of a thin layer of milk chocolate topped with a thin layer of white chocolate, which is then sprinkled with crushed up candy canes.

Find my recipe for Peppermint Bark here.

Cherry & Almond Chocolate Puddles

A new addition to the festive spread this year: these Cherry & Almond Chocolate Puddles are the final, chocolate-y offering in my sweet shop and a special request from my brother.

The puddles come in two varieties: dark chocolate puddles, topped with a whole almond and whole dried cherry, and milk chocolate puddles, topped with flaked almonds and chopped dried cherries.

Find my recipe for Cherry & Almond Chocolate Puddles here.

Toffee Popcorn

Toffee Popcorn isn’t an inherently festive treat, but it’s so addictive that I like to reserve it for special occasions (like Christmas)! My dad is a huge toffee popcorn fan, so this one’s for him.

This year, I decided to pull out all of the stops and make my toffee popcorn with a special variety of popcorn kernel known as ‘mushroom popcorn’ (I bought the Joe & Seph’s kernels). Contrary to what the name might imply, this popcorn does not taste at all of mushrooms (thank goodness, because I’m not a fan!), it’s the shape of the popped corn that gives it its name, because the kernels pop up into big, fluffy balls (kind of like the cap of a mushroom)! It’s the type of popcorn typically used by cinemas, so it has a really nostalgic, special vibe that I thought would really add to the festive magic this year!

Find my recipe for Toffee Popcorn here.

Pistachio Nougat

Making nougat is a slightly more involved process than the other sweet treats on this list so, just like the toffee popcorn, I only make it for really special occasions. This Pistachio Nougat is a particular favourite of my mum’s!

Made with egg whites, honey and roasted pistachios, this nougat is a really fun and impressive treat to make this Christmas.

Find my recipe for Pistachio Nougat here.

Christmas Market-Style Nuts

It wouldn’t be December without my Christmas Market-Style Nuts: these are always my absolute favourite treat when I visit any Christmas Market, so learning how to make them at home was a game-changer.

This year, I’ve used a combination of pecans (my all-time favourite), hazelnuts and macadamia nuts. They’re coated in a salty, sugary, cinnamon mixture, then baked until deliciously crunchy.

Find my recipe for Christmas Market-Style Nuts here.

Setting Up the Sweet Shop

Once you have all of your sweets, jars and assorted decorations, you’re ready to set up your sweet shop! Obviously, you can do this however you want and make it as simple or as over-the-top as you want, but, if you’d prefer to relinquish the mental effort and just follow some instructions, here’s what I’d do…

Choose a space that’s both easily accessible (to humans, not to pets!) and out of the way of the typical Christmas hustle and bustle (you don’t want to be knocking over jars as you’re trying to roast a turkey!). A side table or countertop would work perfectly.

Fill each jar with a different sweet/treat. If you have too many sweets for your jars, you can always mix similar sweets together (I’ve done this here: I put the milk and dark chocolate puddles in the same jar!).

Set the jars out first. This allows you to get their positioning right without having to deal with all of the extra decorations. Place the larger jars at the back and the smaller jars towards the front, so that you can see them all from the front. If everything feels a little too on one level, consider placing some of the jars on upturned ramekins (or other assorted knick-knacks), to add a little more height and dimension!

Once you’re happy with the placement of the jars, it’s time to decorate! Here, I’ve used a pine garland, a string of wired fairy lights, some knitted sweets and a gingerbread Christmas tree, but you can obviously use anything you have/think would look good.

I’d recommend starting with the biggest (bushiest?) decoration first (here, that’s my pine garland), as this will give you a base to work with. I wrapped my garland around all of the jars, adjusting (and readjusting) it until I was happy with how it looked.

Next, I added the fairy lights. Adding some lighting helps to make the setup extra festive and cosy-looking. I’ve used these battery-operated gold star lights, which was great because it meant I didn’t have to worry about plugging anything in.

Finally, I added the smaller, individual decorations in amongst the garlands and jars. I placed the gingerbread tree to one side of the setup, then dotted the knitted sweets around the place, nestling them amongst the branches of the pine garland.

And then, you’re done! Turn the fairy lights on, grab some little bowls or paper bags and get the whole family to visit your festive sweet shop before settling down to watch a Christmas film.

Final Thoughts

I think this is such a special, over-the-top (in the best way), thing to do for your family/friends (and yourself!) this festive season. I’m all about making Christmas feel super magical and if putting my homemade treats into some fancy jars and spending a bit of time arranging them does that, then I’m all for it!

Having said that, this is obviously a very extra approach to the festive season and I am aware that not everybody has the time, energy or mental headspace to take on a project like this, particularly at this time of year! You can always take bits and pieces of this idea: make just one of my homemade sweet recipes, find a single, fancy jar in a charity shop and fill it with Quality Street or store-bought nuts, or even just bring some greenery in from the garden and weave a string of fairy lights through it to decorate your home. Christmas is always a bit stressful, but there’s no reason to make it more stressful: I go to such extremes because it brings me joy, not because it’s in any way necessary.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post: it’s a bit of a special one (it had to be, for the halfway point of Blogmas At Home 2025!), so I’m excited to see what you think. I really embraced my inner child (and my inherent lack of restraint) to make something that I think is really fun and I’m super proud of it!

Gemma

xxx

And welcome to the latest, festive instalment of my Baking Around the World series, where I (attempt to) bake delicious, sweet treats from around the globe, in an effort to broaden my foodie horizons!

This time, we’re heading back to Sweden! I’ve already made one bake from Sweden (jordgubbstårta, a light and airy cake filled with pastry cream and strawberries), but I love making festive cookies from around the world this time of year, so I decided to try out these schackrutor (‘chess squares’) too.

A quick Baking Around the World disclaimer before we get into the recipe:

While I have done/will do extensive research for each of the recipes in this series, the recipes are unlikely to be 100% authentic because of differences in ingredient availability, variations within families/regions and multiple other reasons. I'm so sorry if I absolutely butcher your favourite childhood treat (and please let me know in the comments if I have made any unforgiveable errors), but please do give me the benefit of the doubt here- I am just a baker with a serious sweet tooth, trying to broaden her baking (and cultural) horizons through tasty snacks :)

Table of Contents

• Schackrutor: Explained
• Ingredients
• Making the Dough
• Shaping the Dough
• Slicing and Baking the Cookies
• Storage Instructions
• Final Thoughts
• Recipe
• Sources Used

Schackrutor: Explained

Schackrutor are bitesize, shortbread-style biscuits that are made with two flavours of dough (vanilla and chocolate), which are pieced together to create a (typically) 2×2 checkerboard (hence the name, which means ‘chess squares’). Checkerboard cookies are popular all over the world, but it seems that schackrutor were where it all began!

These cookies aren’t restricted to being a ‘Christmas cookie’, but I think they make such a lovely festive treat, especially if you have any friends/family members who aren’t a fan of the more traditional Christmas flavours (think nuts, oranges and dried fruits!).

Schackrutor are often served in Sweden for fika (a social coffee break steeped in rich tradition), sometimes are part of the ‘sju sorters kakor’ (‘seven types of cookie’) custom. Apparently, seven is considered the ideal number for cookies at a gathering, because any less would be ‘stingy’ and any more would be ‘over the top’! To save time, one dough is often used to make multiple different types of biscuits, sometimes called ‘1-2-3 Cookies’, (because of the proportions of the ingredients in the dough: 1 : 2 : 3 of sugar : butter : flour!) and this is the dough we’ll be making today.

Ingredients

You only need 5 ingredients to make schackrutor. The basic dough itself only requires 3 ingredients, while the 2 remaining ingredients provide the chocolate and vanilla flavour.

• Caster sugar

I used golden caster sugar, but white caster sugar will also work.

• Salted butter

I discovered in my research for the jordgubbstårta that the majority of the butter available in Swedish supermarket tends to be salted, so I’ve used salted butter here in an attempt to be more authentic! It’s great, because then you don’t have to worry about adding any salt yourself! If you only have unsalted butter, I’d recommend adding a generous pinch of fine sea salt to your flour at the beginning of the recipe. Your butter needs to be at room temperature (or slightly softened, if your house is chilly!).

• Plain flour

It’s important to use plain flour (not self-raising) for this recipe, because you don’t want the biscuits to rise— you want them to be short and crumbly!

• Vanilla bean paste

In Sweden, vanilla flavour is usually imparted via the addition of a store-bought product called vaniljsocker (‘vanilla sugar’). This ingredient is not readily available here in the UK, so I’ve used vanilla bean paste instead. I like using the paste because it imparts a lovely vanilla flavour without adding too much liquid to the dough (and you can see all the tiny vanilla bean specks in the cookies!).

• Cocoa powder

A small amount of cocoa powder is added to half of the dough to give it a chocolate-y flavour and a deep brown colour, which contrasts nicely with the vanilla dough and helps the checkerboard design to really stand out.

Making the Dough

Schackrutor dough is really easy to make: I do it in the food processor (because the cookies are so tiny, you only need a small amount of dough, so I do it in my mini food processor. You could easily scale the recipe up and make loads of biscuits, though!).

Place the caster sugar, softened butter, plain flour and vanilla bean paste into the food processor.

Pulse everything together until it comes together into a dough… and that’s the dough made!

Tip the dough out onto a clean work surface.

Then give it a little knead to bring it together into a smooth ball.

At this point, you need to weigh the dough, so that you can split it in half evenly. You can eyeball this, but you’ll get the neatest, most even cookies if you weight it! Weigh the whole ball of dough, then divide that number by 2 and split the dough into two equal balls, each weighing that final amount.

Now you need to add the cocoa powder to one of the dough balls. I like to knead it in by hand, until no streaks of vanilla dough remain, so that I can make sure it’s really well incorporated! It’s a little messy, but all the best things are.

Once you have two balls of dough: one chocolate and one vanilla, you’re ready to shape the dough into the classic checkerboard design!

Shaping the Dough

Now it’s time to make the schackrutor log (though it’s really more of a cuboid, which is what gives these biscuits their classic, square shape when sliced!).

The log is made up of four smaller logs (also cuboids): two vanilla and two chocolate, which are pressed together to form the checkerboard design.

Take one of your dough halves (I’m working with the chocolate dough first here) and divide it in half again, so you have two equal balls of dough (it helps to weigh and divide the dough by 2 here, just like last time, to ensure they’re perfectly even!).

Take one of the dough balls and form it into a thin, rectangular log. The aim is for the cross section of the log to be a 1 x 1 cm square (mine ended up about 17cm long). I used my hands to press the dough into a rough log, then tapped all of the sides with a bench scraper, turning the log as I went, to get those square edges.

Repeat this process for the second dough ball, making a square log as similar to the first as you can! Things might be getting a little sticky at this point, but it’s important that you don’t add any extra flour/cocoa powder, because the logs need to be tacky enough to stick to each other later on. If things get unbearably sticky, I’d recommend just washing down your work surface and utensils before getting going again (almost like a stickiness reset!).

Once you have your two chocolate logs, repeat the whole process for the vanilla dough. I’d recommend wiping down your work surface before you do this, to make sure you don’t get any streaks of cocoa in your vanilla dough. Because of the added cocoa powder in the chocolate dough, you might find that the vanilla dough is slightly softer/stickier, but don’t worry— it’ll bake up perfectly!

Once you have all four of the logs ready to go, you can form the checkerboard design.

Place one vanilla log alongside one chocolate log and press them together, being careful not to distort the shapes too much.

Then, add the second vanilla log on top of the chocolate log and the second chocolate log on top of the bottom vanilla log, pressed against each other along the middle so that you have a 2×2 design, with the logs of each colour in opposite quadrants. Gently press all of the logs together so that there are no gaps between them.

Wrap the log tightly in clingfilm, then use the bench scraper again to press gently on each of the sides a few times to really square them off.

Transfer the log to the fridge and allow it to chill for at least 2 hours before slicing. This ensures that they are firm enough to slice without disturbing the checkerboard pattern (and means that the cookies won’t spread too much during baking!).

Slicing and Baking the Cookies

Once the cookie logs have chilled, it’s time to slice & bake them!

Start by preheating the oven to 180°C (conventional oven, not fan) and lining a baking tray with greaseproof paper.

Remove the schackrutor log from the fridge and use a small, sharp knife to cut it into slices, about 5-7mm thick (don’t worry too much about getting them perfect, just try your best so that they bake pretty evenly!).

Space the cookies out onto the prepared baking trays (they won’t spread too much, but it’s best to leave a little space between them, just in case!).

Then, it’s time to bake the schackrutor! They’ll need about 6-8 minutes in the preheated oven, just until the edges are starting to turn golden.

Once baked, leave them to cool for 5 or so minutes on their trays, then carefully transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Storage Instructions

The schackrutor need to be stored in an airtight container at room temperature. They’ll keep for about 3 days before they start going a bit soft (still tasty, just not quite as crisp!).

Final Thoughts

I LOVE these little checkerboard cookies! They dough itself is very similar to the one I use for my 5-Ingredient Iced Star Biscuits, but it really shows how versatile it is, because the two cookies have such different vibes.

Also… these cookies are SO much smaller than I expected them to be! As in, they really are bitesize. You could definitely make them bigger if you wanted to (by making taller/wider logs, or even stacking more logs together, which I’m very interested in having a go at), but I do kind of love how tiny they are, it makes them feel so cute and dainty.

These are a simple cookie, elevated to something surprisingly impressive by just a little cocoa powder and a bit of shaping, which I think is pretty magical! I also like that you can form the log, get everything ready, then slice and bake the cookies when you want to serve them, so your family/friends can enjoy some delicious, fresh biscuits.

Recipe

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Swedish Schackrutor

Bitesize vanilla and chocolate shortbread cookies with a checkerboard design.

Course Dessert, Snack

Cuisine Swedish

Keyword 5 ingredient, Biscuit, Chocolate, Vanilla

Prep Time 40 minutes minutes

Cook Time 8 minutes minutes

Chill Time 2 hours hours

Total Time 2 hours hours 35 minutes minutes

Servings 25 cookies

Equipment

• Baking tray lined with greaseproof paper.
• Bench scraper/clean metal ruler, for squaring off the biscuit dough.

Ingredients

• 25 g caster sugar
• 50 g salted butter, softened.
• 75 g plain flour
• 1/4 tsp vanilla bean paste
• 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder

Instructions

• Place the sugar, butter, flour and vanilla bean paste into a food processor. Pulse until a dough forms.
• Weigh the dough and divide it in half evenly.
• Knead the cocoa powder into one half of the cookie dough until no streaks of vanilla dough remains.
• Divide the vanilla dough into two equal balls. Form each ball into a square log (use a bench scraper/clean metal ruler to really square off the edges), about 1 x 1 x 17cm. Set aside, then repeat with the chocolate dough, so that you have four logs. Do not add any extra flour/cocoa powder at this stage— you need the dough to be slightly sticky.
• Press one vanilla log against one chocolate log. Place the second vanilla log on top of the first chocolate log, then the second chocolate log in the remaining space, on top of the first vanilla log. Press the logs together gently so they stick.
• Wrap the log tightly in cling film and use a bench scraper to press up against the sides and make it super square. Place the log into the fridge to chill for 2 hours before slicing and baking.
• Preheat the oven to 180°C (conventional, not fan).
• Cut the log into approx. 5-7mm slices. Space the cookies on lined baking trays and bake in the preheated oven for 6-8 minutes, until just starting to turn golden around the edges.
• Allow the cookies to cool for 5 minutes on the trays, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before enjoying. The cookies can be kept in an airtight container at room temperature for about 3 days before they start going soft.

Sources Used

Books:

Crumbs: Cookies and Sweets from Around the World, Ben Mims.

ScandiKitchen: Fika and Hygge, Bronte Aurell.

Websites:

Daily In-A Kitchen: 3×3 Checkerboard Cookies

Totally Swedish: Brysselkex and Schackrutor

True North Kitchen: Swedish Checkerboard Cookies

Swedish Spoon: Schackrutor—Swedish checkerboard cookies

Visit Sweden: Chessboard Cookies (‘Schackrutor’) – Recipe

Every Christmas, I make a whole load of my family’s favourite Peppermint Bark. We were sent some homemade peppermint bark as a gift many years ago and, ever since, it just hasn’t been the festive season without a full jar of the stuff!

However, my sister-in-law, Amy, is not a huge fan of peppermint, so, obviously, that particular bark isn’t exactly her treat of choice. Last year, we sat down and brainstormed some ideas for a zero-peppermint alternative and we landed on this: a Rocky Road-inspired bark, with a 50/50 blend of milk and dark chocolate with raisins, marshmallows and digestive biscuits.

In today’s post, I’m sharing the recipe for Amy’s Bark: a fun, festive alternative to peppermint bark (for the candy cane-haters and the rocky road-lovers alike!).

Table of Contents

• Ingredients
• Method
  • Tempering the Chocolate
  • Assembling the Bark
• Recipe

Ingredients

To make Amy’s Bark, you will need:

• Dark chocolate

I like to use a 50/50 blend of dark and milk chocolate for this recipe. The dark chocolate that I use contains about 72% cocoa solids (so relatively dark). When combined with the milk chocolate, you get a perfectly sweet (but not-too-sweet!), chocolate base. However, if you prefer, you can use all dark or all milk: it’s up to you!

• Milk chocolate

The milk chocolate that I use for this recipe contains about 32% cocoa solids.

• Digestive biscuits

Biscuits add great crunch and texture to the bark. Digestives are a classic biscuit here in the UK and a key feature of our Rocky Road. They’re great, because they add a slight saltiness, which balances out the sweetness of the other ingredients, but feel free to experiment with different biscuits!

• Raisins

Dried fruit adds sweetness, tartness and a bit of a chew to bark. You can use raisins or sultanas for this recipe (I actually prefer sultanas myself, because they’re seedless!), but you could also really branch out and use dried cranberries, cherries or even chopped, dried apricots!

• Mini marshmallows

Marshmallows add even more chew and sweetness. I prefer to use mini marshmallows so they can be easily distributed throughout the bark (and it’s a lot less sticky than cutting up bigger marshmallows!).

Method

Amy’s Bark is pretty simple to make: the only tricky part is tempering the chocolate! Once the chocolate is in temper, you need to work fast, so it’s best to get everything weighed out and ready before you start:

• Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.
• Weigh out the marshmallows and raisins and have them to hand, ready to sprinkle over the bark.
• Break the digestive biscuits up into very small pieces (this helps to keep the bark relatively thin and ensures that the biscuits are evenly distributed throughout the chocolate).

Tempering the Chocolate

To make Amy’s Bark, you start by tempering the chocolate. This ensures the finished bark sets properly at room temperature and has a great snap.

This chocolate tempering process is complicated by the fact that we’re using a combination of two chocolate types: milk and dark, so it’s a little different to the chocolate tempering instructions given here. Luckily, dark chocolate is actually the easiest to temper, so it’s easier to temper this mix than it is to just temper milk chocolate!

You’re welcome to use your favourite method for tempering chocolate, but this is what I do:

Roughly chop all of the chocolate (milk and dark). Transfer about 4/5 of the chocolate to a heatproof bowl and microwave on the lowest setting for 1 minute (if you don’t have a microwave, you can do this over a pan of barely simmering water on the hob).

While the chocolate is in the microwave, continue chopping the remaining 1/5 of the chocolate so that it is super fine. We’ll use this later to help with the tempering process.

After 1 minute, give the chocolate a stir. It won’t look very different at this stage, so put it back in for another minute (don’t be tempted to skip the stirring step, though: chocolate can burn very easily, so you want to take it slow and steady).

Keep microwaving the chocolate in 30 second – 1 minute bursts, stirring in between each burst, until it is completely melted. Check the temperature as you go, using a probe thermometer: you want it to reach 45-47°C. Don’t let the chocolate go any higher than 50°C.

Once the chocolate has melted and is at the correct temperature, add a small amount of the finely chopped, reserved chocolate and stir it in well until it has melted into the rest of the chocolate. The additional chocolate is known as ‘seed chocolate’ and helps the melted chocolate to cool the right way. This, along with the stirring motion, is the key to perfectly tempered chocolate!

Keep adding seed chocolate and stirring, keeping an eye on the temperature of the chocolate, until it reaches 26-27°C. If you run out of seed chocolate, just keep stirring the chocolate until it comes down to temperature (or chop up a little more chocolate, if you have it!).

Next, return the chocolate to the microwave and heat it very gently (5-10 second bursts on the lowest setting) until it reaches 30-32°C. The chocolate is now in temper and is ready to use! You’ll want to work fast at this stage, because it will start to set quite quickly.

Assembling the Bark

Tip the broken up digestives into the bowl with the tempered chocolate. Mix them together quickly, but thoroughly, so that all of the digestives are covered in the chocolate. This helps to keep the biscuits slightly fresher and crunchier than if they were just scattered over the top of the chocolate, so your bark will last longer.

Tip the chocolate mixture onto the prepared baking tray and spread it out into a thin layer using an offset palette knife, or the back of a spoon/spatula.

Sprinkle over the raisins and marshmallows, pressing them down gently as you go to ensure that they stick to the chocolate. Continue to work quickly at this point, because if the chocolate sets too hard before the raisins/marshmallows are added, they won’t stick!

Set the bark aside at room temperature to harden completely (about 30 minutes).

Once firm, break the bark up into pieces and enjoy!

The bark can be stored at room temperature, but it’s important to keep it in an airtight jar/tin to keep the biscuits super crunchy. It can also be packaged up in little bags and given to your friends and family as gifts!

Recipe

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Rocky Road Bark (Amy’s Bark)

A 50/50 blend of dark and milk chocolate, digestive biscuits, raisins and marshmallows all combined into a fun bark, perfect for snacking on and gifting this festive season!

Course Snack

Cuisine British

Keyword 5 ingredient, Chocolate, Rocky Road

Prep Time 1 hour hour

Setting Time 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 30 minutes minutes

Equipment

• 1 Baking tray lined with greaseproof paper.
• Thermometer

Ingredients

• 3 digestive biscuits
• 180 g dark chocolate
• 180 g milk chocolate
• 50 g raisins
• 25 g mini marshmallows

Instructions

• Break the digestive biscuits into very small pieces. Set them aside. Weigh out the raisins and mini marshmallows and set them aside too, ready for later.
• Melt and temper the chocolate (both the dark and milk, together). See post above for detailed instructions on how to do this.
• Working quickly, mix the broken digestives into the chocolate until completely coated.
• Tip the chocolate/biscuit mixture onto the lined baking tray and use an offset spatula/the back of a spoon to spread it out quickly into a thin layer.
• Sprinkle over the raisins and mini marshmallows, pressing them down gently into the chocolate to make sure they stick.
• Set the bark aside at room temperature until hardened (about 30 minutes) before breaking into pieces. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.

It’s time to introduce you to the delight that is the Chocolate Puddle!

What is a Chocolate Puddle, you ask? It’s exactly what it sounds like: a literal puddle (i.e., bigger than a drop, (much) smaller than a pond) of chocolate, topped with whatever delicious additions your heart desires. Chocolate puddles are one of the easiest candies to make and are super customisable (so they’re particularly good for families that can’t quite agree on the ideal, chocolate-y treat!). You can make them look (and taste) super elegant & fancy, or super fun & frivolous: it all depends on what you choose to top them with!

Keep these puddles in a jar for your family to snack on this festive season. Pile them into cellophane bags and give them to your friends as gifts. Host a Puddle Party and make hundreds of them, letting all of your guests sprinkle over their favourite additions and create custom puddles. The puddle possibilities are endless. That is the joy of the Chocolate Puddle!

Today, I’m sharing the recipe for two varieties of Cherry & Almond Chocolate Puddles, which will hopefully provide you with a) a blueprint for a delicious, cherry & almond snack and b) a starting point for any future puddle ventures. Let the puddles begin!

Table of Contents

• The Chocolate Puddle: Explained
• Tempering Chocolate
  • Equipment
  • The Seeding Method
  • Chocolate Tempering Temperatures
• Making Chocolate Puddles
  • Milk Chocolate, Cherry & Almond Puddles
  • Dark Chocolate, Cherry & Almond Puddles
• Cherry & Almond Chocolate Puddles Recipe

The Chocolate Puddle: Explained

At its core, the Chocolate Puddle is just a scant teaspoon of tempered chocolate (white, milk, dark etc., the choice is yours!), sprinkled with delicious toppings and left to set at room temperature until it solidifies into a delicious, chocolate-y treat.

You can make puddles by simply melting the chocolate, skipping the tempering stage and leaving them to set in the fridge but a) you’ll have to store them in the fridge and b) they’ll be messier to eat (untempered chocolate is absolutely going to melt the second it hits your fingers, so hello sticky fingerprints all over your Christmas wrapping!).

Tempering the chocolate means that the chocolate will set at room temperature, so you can store the puddles in a jar on the counter (for optimal snacking!). It also makes it easier to give the puddles as gifts and ensures they have the perfect snap and shine (though, admittedly, the shine is the hardest part to get, as you can tell by the unfortunate bloom on my puddles this year… let this be a tempering lesson to you: don’t let your chocolate go above the ‘melting’ temperature range!).

You can use any type of chocolate and any topping you want to make puddles. Pick your favourite ingredients and flavour combinations: mini marshmallows, nuts and dried fruit are all delicious, but the possibilities are endless. Today, I’m making cherry & almond puddles, so I’m using a combination of dried cherries, whole almonds and flaked almonds, along with milk and dark chocolate.

Tempering Chocolate

I do already have a post on the blog where I talk about tempering chocolate (you can find it here), but I thought I’d re-share my method in this post to make it super easy for you guys to follow along! I’ve also updated my tempering technique a little since that first post to make the whole process a little quicker & easier (woohoo!).

Equipment

To temper chocolate, you will need:

• Heatproof bowl

I melt chocolate using the microwave, but you can also do it by placing the chocolate into a bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water. Either way, you’ll need a bowl that can withstand the heat!

• Spatula

I like to use a silicone spatula (particularly one with a flat edge) for stirring the chocolate, because you can really scrape down the sides of the bowl with it: chocolate gets messy and you don’t want to waste any!

• Large knife

You’ll need to finely chop some of the chocolate and a large knife is the best tool for this.

• Chopping board

A large knife requires a sturdy chopping board!

• Digital thermometer

You’ll need to be able to monitor the temperature of your chocolate as you go. There are all sorts of candy thermometers available that will work perfectly well for this, but I like to use an infrared one (like this), because it means the thermometer stays clean and chocolate-free! I do recommend using a digital thermometer of some sort though, because the temperatures that you need to watch out for are very specific!

The Seeding Method

The method that I use for tempering chocolate is called the ‘Seeding Method‘. It involves introducing finely chopped, unmelted chocolate to the melted chocolate to encourage the latter to recrystallise in the correct way. It sounds complicated, but it’s not too crazy (it’s basically just a lot of stirring).

The first step is to prepare the ‘seed’ chocolate. Take about 1/5 of the chocolate you plan to temper and, using a large knife, chop it up very finely. Set this aside for now.

The next step is to melt the chocolate. Place the remaining 4/5 of the chocolate into your heatproof bowl and melt it using your preferred method. For me, this is 30-60 second bursts on the lowest setting in my microwave, stirring in between each burst.

Monitor the temperature of the chocolate as you do this. It’s important that the chocolate reaches a particular temperature (this varies based on the type of chocolate you use: see the ‘melting’ range in the ‘Chocolate Tempering Temperatures‘ table below), but does not go above the upper limit, or it won’t temper properly (see the bloom on my puddles for evidence of this… a definite case of ‘do as I say, not as I do’ here!).

Now, it’s time to add the seed chocolate! Add the finely chopped chocolate to the melted chocolate a little at a time, stirring between each addition until the seed chocolate has completely melted into the rest of the mass.

Monitor the temperature of the chocolate as you go. The aim is to get it down to within the ‘cooling’ range (see table below). If you run out of seed chocolate before the temperature falls within that range, just keep stirring the chocolate, allowing it to cool further, until it does. Conversely, if you reach the correct temperature range before you’ve used all of your seed chocolate, don’t add any more! You can always transfer the leftover seed chocolate to an airtight container for next time you’re tempering.

Next, you need to very carefully warm the chocolate back up a little. The required temperature increase at this stage is only very slight, so you won’t need to heat it for long. Start small (about 10 seconds on the lowest setting in the microwave), then give it additional 3-5 second bursts if needed.

Once your chocolate has reached its final temperature, your chocolate is officially ‘in temper’ and is ready to use to make your Chocolate Puddles! It’s important to work quickly at this stage, because the chocolate will begin to set straightaway at room temperature (that is, after all, the whole point of tempering!).

Chocolate Tempering Temperatures

Making Chocolate Puddles

Once you have your tempered chocolate, its time to turn it into puddles!

Use a teaspoon to place small dollops of the tempered chocolate onto a tray, lined with baking paper. Aim to make all of the puddles a similar size, but don’t worry too much: any variation just shows they’re homemade!

Give the tray a little wiggle or tap it gently on the work surface. This helps the chocolate to settle out and makes the puddles super smooth.

Scatter over your chosen toppings (think nuts, marshmallows, dried fruit— whatever you want!) while the chocolate is still wet (remember to work quickly!). If you have any larger toppings, it might be easier to press them into the chocolate individually instead.

Set the tray aside for about an hour, until the puddles are completely set and you can peel them off the baking paper easily.

Milk Chocolate, Cherry & Almond Puddles

To make these puddles, I used tempered milk chocolate, then scattered over flaked almonds and finely chopped dried cherries.

Dark Chocolate, Cherry & Almond Puddles

To make these puddles, I used tempered dark chocolate, then pressed one whole almond and one dried cherry into each puddle.

Cherry & Almond Chocolate Puddles Recipe

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Cherry & Almond Chocolate Puddles

Chocolate Puddles are a super easy, delicious treat to make, either for snacking on or for giving as gifts. They can be easily customised to include your favourite flavours, but these ones feature dried cherries and almonds.

Course Dessert, Snack

Keyword 3 ingredient, Chocolate

Prep Time 45 minutes minutes

Setting Time 1 hour hour

Total Time 1 hour hour 34 minutes minutes

Servings 60 puddles

Equipment

• candy thermometer (see Note 1).

Ingredients

To make the dark chocolate puddles:

• 100 g dark chocolate (I used 54% dark chocolate).
• 30 dried cherries
• 30 whole almonds

To make the milk chocolate puddles:

• 100 g milk chocolate (I used 32% milk chocolate).
• 1 small handful dried cherries, finely chopped.
• 1 small handful flaked almonds

Instructions

To make the dark chocolate puddles:

• Temper the dark chocolate using your favourite method (or the method detailed in the post above).
• Place small spoonfuls of the chocolate onto a tray lined with baking paper, leaving about 2-3cm between each dollop.
• Once you've used up all of the chocolate, give the whole tray a little jiggle, or tap it gently on the work surface to smooth out the surface of the puddles.
• Quickly press one almond and one dried cherry onto each chocolate puddle.
• Set the tray aside at room temperature for about an hour, until the puddles are completely set and you can easily peel them off the baking paper. Enjoy immediately, or transfer to an airtight container and store at room temperature.

To make the milk chocolate puddles:

• Temper the milk chocolate using your favourite method (or the method detailed in the post above).
• Place small spoonfuls of the chocolate onto a tray lined with baking paper, leaving about 2-3cm between each dollop.
• Once you've used up all of the chocolate, give the whole tray a little jiggle, or tap it gently on the work surface, to smooth out the surface of the puddles.
• Working quickly, scatter the chopped, dried cherries and the flaked almonds over the chocolate puddles, making sure each puddle has a bit of cherry and almond.
• Set the tray aside at room temperature for about an hour, until the puddles are completely set and you can easily peel them off the baking paper. Enjoy immediately, or transfer to an airtight container and store at room temperature.

Notes

1. I like to use an infrared thermometer for this, because it stays clean and chocolate-free, which makes clean up a lot easier, but you can use your favourite candy thermometer.

Once upon a time, my family went on holiday to the south of France. We visited Carcassonne, which is a fortified city that is very popular with tourists and bought some nougat from a chocolate shop. Immediately, we were hooked.

During lockdown, I dedicated myself to recreating the nougat at home. Naturally, I fell deep down the nougat rabbit hole. It turns out, not all nougats are made equal: there are hard, brittle versions; soft, fluffy versions; dense, chocolate-y versions and many, many more. I am pretty certain that the nougat we had is called (or is at least similar to) Nougat de Montélimar, which is soft, thick and chewy (sounds right, anyway!).

Anyway, I digress. After, a bit of trialling and testing, I finally have my perfect nougat recipe. My favourite flavour on the trip was the pistachio one, so I’m sharing the recipe for a pistachio nougat today!

Table of Contents

• Equipment
• Ingredients
• Making the Nougat
• Storage Instructions
• Tips & Tricks
• Recipe

Equipment

Making sweets/candy usually requires some specialist equipment to make sure everything goes smoothly. Here is the equipment that you’ll need to make this nougat:

• Candy thermometer

A candy thermometer is a MUST for this recipe. The sugar syrup needs to reach a specific temperature (140°C) to achieve the perfect, soft and chewy texture. There are other ways that you can test the temperature of the syrup, but they can be a bit of a faff and are nowhere near as accurate. If you don’t have a candy thermometer, I’d strongly recommend buying one for this recipe (you can use it for so many other recipes too!). I like to use a probe thermometer, because they’re super accurate and easy to clean!

• Stand mixer

Another must: this recipe requires 15 whole minutes (yes, really) of full-speed whisking. You do not want to be doing that by hand, even if you have an electric hand whisk!

• Rolling pin

To get the nougat perfectly smooth and even, it’s rolled out between two sheets of wafer paper. To do this, you need a rolling pin (though, if you don’t have one, you could always use a wine bottle)!.

• Spatula

Nougat is sticky, particularly when it’s warm, so a spatula (lightly greased with oil) will be your best friend.

• Flat-edged wooden spoon

You need a really strong implement to stir the nuts through the nougat (it’s super stiff!) and my preference is a flat-edged wooden spoon. The flat edge makes it really easy to get right down to the bottom of bowl and make sure no nougat goes to waste. A regular wooden spoon will also work, though, if that’s what you have.

Ingredients

To make pistachio nougat, you will need the following ingredients:

• Wafer paper

This is a specialist ingredient, but you can find it online (I used this one, from Amazon). It’s typically sold in A4 sheets and you’ll need 2 sheets for this recipe. Nougat can get sticky, so a sheet of wafer paper is placed underneath and on top of the slab to make it easier to manage/eat later on!

• Pistachios

I’ve used whole pistachios in this nougat (to make it pistachio nougat), but you can use different nuts if you prefer. You could even do a combination of nuts, such as pistachios and almonds.

• Caster sugar

I used golden caster sugar for my nougat, but white caster sugar would work just as well.

• Honey

Honey is a key ingredient for this style of nougat: it adds flavour and helps to achieve that perfect, chewy texture.

• Water

Is water an ingredient? I suppose so, when it needs to be measured precisely! The water is combined with the sugar and honey to form a syrup, which is whisked together with the egg whites.

• Egg whites

Egg whites form the base of the nougat. You don’t need the yolks for this recipe, so you can use them for something else!

• Green food colouring

This is optional, but I like to add green food colouring to this nougat recipe, just to really drive home the whole ‘pistachio’ thing. You can leave it out, or you can use a different colour, instead. I used the Aqua Blend food colouring from Colour Mill in the shade Forest, but I’ve used other food colourings in the past and they worked absolutely fine.

• Sunflower oil

As I mentioned, nougat gets sticky, so it’s handy to have a little oil to hand to grease your spatula/knife. I’ve used sunflower, but any flavourless oil will work. It just helps you to work with the nougat without it getting stuck to anything and everything!

Making the Nougat

The first step when making this nougat is to toast the pistachios (or whichever nuts you’re using). I like to just give them a gentle toast, so they taste extra delicious but still keep their vibrant green colour. Just put them in a dry pan over medium-high heat for a few minutes, giving them a shake every now and then, until they’re smelling nutty. Once they’re toasted, remove them from the pan and set them aside to cool while you make the nougat.

Place the sugar, honey and water into a large saucepan. Set the pan over medium heat and allow the sugar to melt. Try not to stir it too much once it’s on the heat (you don’t want the sugar to crystallise!).

While the sugar is melting, place the egg whites and 10-15 drops of food colouring (if using) in the metal bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment. Adding the food colouring at this stage means you’ll get a more even colour throughout the nougat, but, as the nougat whips, the colour will become much less vibrant, so you need more than you think! You can always add more later though, if needed (and I did need to because, at this stage, I added a grand total of 3 drops to my nougat, which left it looking practically snow white). Leave this to the side, ready to whisk later on.

Once the sugar has melted, keep the syrup over the heat and monitor the temperature of it with a candy thermometer. You’re aiming for it to reach 140°C.

Once the sugar reaches approximately 130°C (at this point it will be bubbling away nicely!), turn the stand mixer up to high speed and whisk the egg whites until they reach stiff peaks.

You don’t want to do this too early, or the egg whites will collapse before the syrup is ready. Similarly, you don’t want to leave it too late, or the syrup will cool down too much before the egg whites are ready! I find that 130°C is a pretty good sweet spot.

Once the sugar reaches 140°C, remove the pan from the heat. With the mixer still running on high, pour the syrup into the beaten egg whites in a slow, steady stream down the side of the bowl.

Turn the mixer up to full speed and leave it to whisk for about 15 minutes, or until the nougat is thick, stiff and beginning to tear. The nougat will still be warm (and the metal bowl pretty hot) at this point, so be careful when you handle it!

You can see in the photo above what happens when you add the food colouring at this stage (as opposed to with the egg whites): there’s a clear colour divide in the bowl! Luckily, the colours mix together pretty easily with a wooden spoon and a bit of elbow grease, so don’t worry too much.

From now on, work quite quickly, as the nougat will become harder to work with the cooler it gets. Tip in the toasted, cooled pistachios.

Use a flat-bottomed wooden spoon to mix them into the nougat, making sure to get right down to the bottom of the bowl.

Place one sheet of the wafer paper onto a clean work surface. Tip the nougat on top of the wafer paper.

Use a lightly oiled spatula to press the nougat down slightly.

Place the second sheet of wafer paper right on top of the nougat and smooth it out with your hands. Use a rolling pin to roll out the nougat to your desired thickness (mine was about 2.5cm/1 inch thick, but you can go as thick/thin as you want!).

Set the nougat aside at room temperature for a couple of hours to cool down, then transfer the slab to an airtight container and leave it overnight to firm up completely.

Once it’s set, you can trim off any excess paper with a pair of scissors and cut it into bitesize squares with a large knife, ready to enjoy! If you find that the nougat is sticking to your knife, you can lightly grease the knife with a little more flavourless oil to help prevent this.

Storage Instructions

The nougat keeps really well, so you can make it in advance. Store it in an airtight container at room temperature and it will be fine for up to 1 month, ready for giving to your friends/family as presents or just enjoying throughout the festive season!

Tips & Tricks

• Colouring the nougat

The easiest time to add food colouring to nougat is at the start, before you whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks, because it will ensure that the nougat is evenly tinted. However, it can be really hard to tell how much you need at this stage, because the colour will get significantly paler once the nougat is whisked. Luckily, you can always add more colouring later on (you’ll just have to mix in any residual, paler streaks in by hand!).

• Oil

Lightly oiling your utensils (particularly the spatula you use to transfer the nougat from the bowl to the wafer paper and the knife you use to cut the nougat before serving) is super helpful, because it prevents the nougat from sticking to them. I’d definitely recommend keeping some oil on hand to save your sanity!

• Washing up

Nougat is sticky (have I mentioned that enough times?), so washing up all of the bowls and pans can seem a bit daunting! The important thing to remember, though, is that nougat is mainly sugar and sugar dissolves in water. Just fill the mixer bowl and saucepan with hot, soapy water, submerge all of the other nougat-y/syrupy utensils in the bowl/pan and leave for 5-10 minutes. It’ll be so much easier to clean afterwards!

Recipe

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Pistachio Nougat

Soft, chewy, French-style nougat, filled with pistachios.

Course Dessert, Snack

Cuisine French

Keyword Nougat, Pistachio

Prep Time 1 hour hour

Setting time 12 hours hours

Total Time 13 hours hours

Servings 70 squares

Equipment

• candy thermometer

Ingredients

• 2 sheets A4 wafer paper (see Note 1).
• 165 g pistachios
• 450 g caster sugar
• 225 g honey
• 75 ml water
• 75 g egg whites (approx. 2 large eggs).
• 10-15 drops Green food colouring (optional)(see Note 2).
• Sunflower oil, for greasing.

Instructions

• Place the pistachios into a dry pan and toast over medium-high heat until smelling nutty. Remove from the pan and set aside to cool.
• Place the sugar, honey and water into a large saucepan. Place over medium heat and wait for the sugar to dissolve. Do not stir.
• Place the egg whites into the metal bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment. Add the green food colouring, if using (the colour will pale significantly when the nougat is whipped, but you can always add more colouring later on if needed). Set aside for now.
• Once the sugar has dissolved, keep the syrup over the heat and allow to bubble away. Monitor the temperature using a candy thermometer.
• Once the syrup reaches about 130°C, start whipping the egg whites on high speed until they reach stiff peaks.
• Once the syrup reaches 140°C, remove it from the heat and, with the mixer running on high, pour it into the egg whites in a slow, steady stream down the side of the bowl.
• Turn the mixer speed up to full and leave the nougat to whip for about 15 minutes, until the mixture is thick, stiff and beginning to tear. When you stop the machine and lift the whisk, the ribbon falling from it should tear off. The nougat will still be warm (as will the metal bowl, so be careful!).
• At this point, work quickly, because the nougat will get harder to work with the cooler it gets. Add the toasted pistachios and use a wooden spoon to stir them into the nougat until they are evenly distributed.
• Place one of the wafer paper sheets onto a clean work surface. Tip the nougat onto the wafer paper. Use a lightly oiled spatula to flatten out the nougat slightly, then press the second wafer paper sheet on top of it. Use a rolling pin to gently and evenly flatten out the nougat until it is your desired thickness (mine was approx. 2.5cm/1 inch).
• Leave the nougat at room temperature to cool for a couple of hours, then transfer the slab to an airtight container and leave overnight to set. Once set, trim off any excess wafer paper around the edges with a pair of scissors, then use a sharp, lightly oiled knife to cut it into squares.
• Store the nougat in an airtight container at room temperature. It will keep for about 1 month.

Notes

1. I used this wafer paper from Amazon.
2. I used the Aqua Blend colouring from Colour Mill in the shade Forest.

Recipe adapted from https://www.souschef.co.uk/blogs/the-bureau-of-taste/strawberry-pistachio-nougat-recipe

As I mentioned in the other Wedding Cake Week posts, the decoration on these cakes was really clean and minimal: just a handful of pressed, edible violas on the top of each cake and two gingerbread bride & groom toppers on the middle, coffee tier.

In today’s post, I’ll be sharing how I made these gingerbread toppers, including the full gingerbread recipe that I used (which is a great recipe for a purpose like this, because it lasts for so long: no stale gingerbread here!).

A little gender-related disclaimer at this point: throughout this post, I have referred to the gingerbread figure with trousers as the ‘gingerbread man’ and the gingerbread figure with a skirt as the ‘gingerbread woman’: this is just for clarity, because, at the wedding that this cake was for, that is an accurate representation of the bride and groom and what they wore! Obviously, you can make a bride wearing trousers, a groom wearing a dress, two grooms, two brides, or just two gingerbread people wearing whatever you’re capable of recreating in icing!

Table of Contents

• The Idea & Design
• Making the Gingerbread Dough
• Baking the Gingerbread People
• Decorating the Gingerbread Toppers
  • Making the Bouquet
  • Piping on the Decorations
• Assembling the Toppers
• Attaching the Toppers to the Cake
• Recipe

The Idea & Design

Though not particularly in vogue these days, traditional wedding cakes often feature a little pair of bride & groom figurines sat on top (though I believe this is more of an American tradition than a British one?). I guess this was just to remind guests that they were, in fact, at a wedding.

When I first started sketching out some designs for this cake, I had the random idea to replicate this tradition using edible figurines made of gingerbread, instead. Lucky for me, the bride & groom in question (my brother and new sister-in-law) loved the idea, so I got to run with it!

I really wanted to lean into the gingerbread man aesthetic, rather than the bride-and-groom aesthetic, with these toppers, so, while both have a little nod to the occasion in their individual decoration, I knew I wanted to keep the icing pretty minimal and gingerbread-esque. In the end, I gave them both basic little faces (two eyes and a mouth, standard stuff), then gave the groom a little bow tie and some buttons, and the bride a bouquet of flower paste daisies (the easiest of the flowers to make out of sugar paste).

I was also aware that, at the venue, the cake could be viewed from all around, so I didn’t want the back of the gingerbread people to look ugly. In the end, I opted to sandwich two identical gingerbread bride/grooms together (much like an Oreo), so that the cake looked the same from the front and the back.

Making the Gingerbread Dough

I decided to use the ‘gingerbread’ dough recipe that my family has used every year for our gingerbread house, because I know that it holds up really well over time and can sit out at room temperature for as long as needed without going stale. I say ‘gingerbread’ in inverted commas because the recipe we use isn’t actually gingerbread, but this Finnish Spiced Biscuit recipe. I did want the biscuits to have more of a classic, ‘gingerbread’ flavour though, so I adapted the base biscuit recipe to use a different combination of spices, so that we could have the best of both worlds.

I actually made a lot of gingerbread dough, because I was making loads of gingerbread people as the wedding favours, as well as the cake toppers! (If I’m being completely honest, I currently still have a double batch of dough in the freezer after a little… quantity miscalculation… so, if anyone fancies some gingerbread men, hit me up, I guess?). For the toppers themselves, you actually need very little dough: just enough to cut out 4 people (2 brides and 2 grooms), though I recommend making extra to practise your decoration on!

Baking the Gingerbread People

For the gingerbread grooms, I just used a regular, gingerbread man cookie cutter and baked them as they were.

For the gingerbread brides, I had to get a little creative. I went back and forth over how to decorate the gingerbread brides, because I knew I didn’t want anything too fussy or elaborate and I also knew that, every year, when I decorate the gingerbread people for our Christmas gingerbread house, it’s decorating the gingerbread women that causes me the most grief! I guess it’s just very hard to make a gingerbread dress look good. Eventually, I decided to skip the dress and give the gingerbread bride a bouquet of flowers, instead, which felt much more achievable!

I did, however, quickly realise that the gingerbread bride’s arms would be in the wrong position for holding a bouquet of flowers. After a successful trial, I found that I could gently bend the arms of the cut out gingerbread cookies inwards before baking them. They come apart slightly when baked, so you can afford to press them quite close together in the middle, but they do bake in that position, which was exactly what I needed.

The only thing you have to be slightly mindful of is that, if the gingerbread dough is a bit dry at this stage, it can break/crack as you bend it inwards. This isn’t the end of the world: the cookies will still keep the shape, they’ll just have slightly messier edges. I recommend doing the gingerbread women first, while the dough is still at its most pliable, and bending the arms of each one immediately after cutting them out, to minimise the likelihood of this happening.

Decorating the Gingerbread Toppers

Making the Bouquet

Making the daisies for the bouquet was super easy: I just rolled out some sugar florist paste super thinly, then used a small, flower-shaped cutter to stamp out some little flower shapes. I used these plunge cutters for this (specifically, the second smallest one), because it makes getting the tiny flowers out super easy and the little pointed plunger helps to give the flowers some definition.

I then tinted a small amount of royal icing yellow using Colour Mill’s Aqua Blend formula in the shade Yellow (if I’m being honest, I was aiming for a slightly more subtle shade of yellow, but we live and learn), put it into a piping bag, fitted with a very fine, round tip, and piped little dots of colour into the centre of each daisy. Royal icing doesn’t contain oil, so I find that the Aqua Blend formula gives the best, most even colour.

I let the flowers dry out and harden up overnight at room temperature, then I was ready to use them in my decoration!

Piping on the Decorations

I used royal icing to decorate (and assemble) these gingerbread toppers, because it hardens up completely once set, so there was less likelihood of any unwanted smushing in transit. Royal icing is deceptively easy to make: you literally put the icing sugar, egg white and lemon juice in a bowl and whisk (using an electric mixer, if you value your arms), until its smooth and thick. That’s it!

Once the icing was made, I put it into a piping bag fitted with a small, round piping tip, ready to pipe on the little gingerbread faces and accessories.

If you have a piping tip coupler, I’d recommend using it for the white icing here. You’ll need to use two different tips for the white icing on these cookies: a fine round tip and a slightly wider round tip, so a coupler makes things much easier! If you don’t have one, you can just use two piping bags instead.

I definitely recommend having a few gingerbread people to hand to practise on, so that you can make sure you’re happy with the technique and your designs before you get to work on the real ones.

For the gingerbread grooms, I piped a simple face (as I said, just two dots for eyes and a curved line for the smile), then added a little bow tie (though my brother didn’t wear a bow tie, so I suppose this was just artistic license) and three dots for buttons.

For the gingerbread brides, I piped the same face, then added a generous splodge of icing to the space between the two bent arms and carefully pressed three of the little sugarpaste daisies into that, to make the bouquet. That was it! Simple, but I think it was very effective.

I let the gingerbread people sit out overnight, so that the icing had a chance to harden before I attempted to stick the two halves together (again, to limit the risk of any unwanted smushing). I sealed the piping bag up using some food clips and placed it into a resealable bag (with the extra air removed before sealing), so that it wouldn’t dry out overnight and I could use it again the next day.

Assembling the Toppers

To ensure the toppers stayed upright on the cake, I decided to sandwich a cake pop stick between the two cookie halves, which I could push into the cake at the venue to keep everything secure. Ironically, this time around, the process was super easy for the gingerbread bride and… less straightforward for the gingerbread groom!

For the bride, I just placed a single cake pop stick down the centre of her body, because her skirt conceals it at the bottom. For the groom, I had to place two separate cake pop sticks, one down each leg. It’s important that the cake pop sticks are parallel, to distribute the pressure evenly, so I lined them up from the bottom point of each foot to the corresponding shoulder. With the cookie cutter I used, there was just enough space for this, so it worked out well.

To assemble the toppers, I started by piping a (pretty) thick outline of icing just inside the perimeter of one half of the gingerbread bride/groom (on the undecorated underside, of course), being careful not to go too close to the edge, as the icing does squish outwards a little as you sandwich the cookies.

To protect the icing decorations on the other side, I set the gingerbread cookies face down on some gently crumpled kitchen paper while I worked.

I then filled in the outline with more icing, before inserting the cake pop stick(s), swivelling them gently to ensure they were completely coated in icing and sandwiching the other gingerbread half on top, making sure they were nicely aligned. Again, I set them aside overnight (still sitting on the crumpled kitchen paper), to give the icing a chance to harden up and set.

Attaching the Toppers to the Cake

As I mentioned, I placed the toppers on the cake at the venue, just so that it was one less thing to worry about on the journey down.

I transported the toppers in sealed plastic food containers (leftover from the copious takeaways I needed to get me through the past few months). I lined each container with the gently crumpled kitchen paper, then placed the toppers inside, followed by another layer of kitchen paper, making sure that no pressure was placed on the toppers when the lid was shut. The kitchen paper protected the decorated surfaces and also prevented the toppers from moving around too much during transit.

At the venue, after I had transferred the coffee cake to its stand, I lined the toppers up on the surface, pressing down gently so that the cake pop sticks made slight indentations in the crusted buttercream beneath them. I then used a wooden skewer to poke holes where the cake pop sticks would go, before gently pushing the gingerbread toppers in.

The reason I used the skewer first was to minimise the force I needed to apply on the gingerbread toppers: they’re pretty sturdy, so I don’t think they’d break, but I wasn’t about to risk it!

I pushed the gingerbread toppers right in, so that you couldn’t see any cake pop stick (or, at least, this was the intention— the photos beg to differ!) and so that it looked like the gingerbread bride and groom were just stood right on top of the cake, then I exhaled forcefully and thanked the gingerbread gods that everything had gone successfully.

And that, everybody, is the story of how I made the bride and groom gingerbread toppers for this wedding cake (and ended up with a ridiculous amount of gingerbread dough in my freezer). Hope you enjoyed it!

Recipe

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Gingerbread Wedding Cake Toppers

A classic, long-lasting gingerbread man recipe, adapted into cute little toppers for a wedding cake.

Course Dessert, Snack

Cuisine American, Finnish

Keyword Gingerbread, Royal icing, Wedding cake

Prep Time 2 hours hours

Cook Time 8 minutes minutes

Chill time 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 2 hours hours 25 minutes minutes

Servings 14 biscuit sandwiches

Equipment

• 1 gingerbread woman cookie cutter
• 1 gingerbread man cookie cutter
• 2 baking trays lined with greaseproof paper.
• 1 plunger flower cutter (see Note 1).
• 2-3 piping bags (see Note 2).
• 1 very fine, round piping tip (see Note 2).
• 1 small, round piping tip (see Note 2).
• 1 medium round piping tip (see Note 2).
• Cake pop sticks

Ingredients

For the gingerbread dough:

• 140 g unsalted butter, softened.
• 100 g golden caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 100 ml golden syrup
• 4 tsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1 pinch fine sea salt
• 1 lemon, zest only.
• 450 g plain flour, sifted.

For the royal icing:

• 200 g icing sugar, sifted.
• 1 egg white
• 1 tsp lemon juice

For the sugar daisies:

• 10 g white sugar florist paste (see Note 3).
• Yellow food colouring (see Note 4).

Instructions

• Cream the butter and 50g of the sugar together until pale and fluffy.
• In a separate bowl, whisk the egg with the remaining 50g of sugar until thick and pale (the ribbon stage).
• Mix the bicarbonate of soda into the golden syrup, then pour into the butter mixture and mix well. Add the egg mixture to the butter mixture and mix again.
• Add the spices, salt, lemon zest and flour and mix thoroughly to form a dough.
• Wrap the dough in clingfilm and place into the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.

Cut out and bake the gingerbread people:

• Preheat the oven to 190°C (conventional oven, not fan).
• Cut the chilled dough in half. On a lightly floured surface, roll half of the dough out to the thickness of a £1 coin.
• Start by cutting out the women. Stamp out the shapes using the cookie cutter, then gently bend the arms inward, pressing down gently where they meet the centre of the cookie to secure them. Carefully transfer to a baking tray, lined with greaseproof paper.
• Bake the gingerbread brides in the preheated oven for 6-8 minutes, until golden. Allow to cool on the tray for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely before decorating.
• Roll out the remaining half of the dough and use to cut out the men, leaving the arms as is this time around. Bake and cool in exactly the same way as the brides.
• Gingerbread people can be made in advance. Store in airtight container until ready to decorate.

Make the royal icing (see Note 5):

• Place the icing sugar, egg white and lemon juice in a large bowl. Whisk with an electric mixer until thick and smooth.

Make the sugar daisies:

• Dust a clean work surface with icing sugar. Roll out the florist paste as thinly as you can, then use the plunge flower cutter to cut out lots of little flowers.
• Tint a small amount of the royal icing using the yellow food colouring, then transfer to a piping bag, fitted with the smallest round tip.
• Pipe a small dot of yellow icing into the centre of each flower, then set aside to dry and harden overnight.

Decorate the gingerbread toppers:

• Place the white royal icing in a piping bag fitted with a piping tip coupler (see Note 2) and a small, round tip.
• Pipe smiley faces on all of the cookies, then a bow tie and three buttons on the grooms. On the brides, add a generous amount of icing to the space between the hands, then gently press three of the dried sugar daisies onto the icing, to form a bouquet.
• Set the gingerbread people aside at room temperature to harden before assembling.

Assemble the gingerbread toppers:

• Place half of the gingerbread people, decorated side down, on some lightly crumpled kitchen paper (this will help to protect the decorated surface).
• Switch out the piping tip on the bag of white royal icing to a slightly larger round tip (see Note 2), then use to pipe a neat outline just inside the perimeter of the shape (don't go too close to the edge, as the icing will squish out a little when you sandwich the cookies).
• Fill inside the outline with more icing, then add one cake pop stick down the centre of the brides and two down each leg (making sure the two sticks are parallel to each other) of the grooms. Gently rotate the sticks to cover them in the icing.
• Gently press another cookie, decorated side up this time, on top of the icing, to make a gingerbread sandwich. Leave the cookies on the kitchen paper overnight (at room temperature) so that the icing sets and hardens.

Attach the toppers to the cake:

• When you're ready to attach the toppers to the cake, line them up on top of the cake and press down just enough to make indents of the cake pop sticks in the buttercream.
• Use a skewer to pierce the cake, using the indents as a guide, then gently push the toppers into the cake, until the gingerbread people are sitting flush with the top of the cake and you can't see the cake pop sticks.

Notes

Notes:

1. I used the second smallest size from this pack.
2. If you have a piping tip coupler, I would recommend using it here for the white royal icing. You’ll need to pipe the white icing using two sizes of round tips, so a coupler makes it really easy to switch out the tips. If you don’t have a coupler, just use two separate piping bags: I would suggest putting about 1/3 of the icing in the bag with the smaller tip and 2/3 in the bag with the larger tip.
3. Sugar florist paste works really well for delicate flowers like this, because it’s extra stretchy and dries extra hard. I used this brand.
4. I used Colour Mill Aqua Blend in the shade Yellow. Water-based food colourings give the best results when working with royal icing.
5. You’ll need this batch of royal icing over the course of a few days (the decorations need to set in between stages!). You can keep the icing from drying out by sealing it inside the piping bag and/or a resealable food bag. Just make sure to clip the ends of the piping bag, using a food clip and remove any excess air from the food bag. 

I dream of becoming one of those amazing, gingerbread architects who make the most elaborate, inventive, super precise & gorgeous structures at Christmas every year. However, I am not an architect, I am not particularly logically minded and I am yet to master the art of precise piping. To achieve my dream, then, I must practise my gingerbread art form, and so, over the past couple of years, I have been undertaking a new gingerbread project every Christmas to learn new skills, practise old ones and, in short, become at one with the gingerbread.

Two years ago, I made a Gingerbread Christmas Market. This was particularly special to me, because I created the whole thing by myself: the idea, the templates, the construction— the whole lot. Through that project, I practised my engineering skills, my piping skills and the use of tempered chocolate in gingerbread decoration.

Last year, I wanted something a little more simple, so I decided to make my family’s traditional, classic Gingerbread House, with a few little decorative changes, here and there. The main focus of this project was finding new, exciting ways to incorporate sweets into the design, for the most Hansel and Gretel-esque house I could possibly make.

This year, I wanted to practise some different skills. I saw this Gingerbread Defender on Pinterest and I was absolutely BLOWN away! I’m not big into cars, but this felt very Christmassy and original and it really stuck with me— I couldn’t get it out of my head! The maker (@chlorosiswolff on Instagram) has actually made her templates + tutorial available for free (you can find these via the link in her Instagram bio), which is so incredibly generous & convinced me to give it a go myself! With all of the hardcore engineering work done for me, I figured this project would give me a chance to work on some new, gingerbread-related skills, including making sugar windows, using caramel glue and assembling a more complex structure. I also knew it would give me a chance to practise my piping skills, so it felt like the perfect project for this year’s gingerbread undertaking!

I made this Gingerbread Defender with my (soon to be) sister-in-law, and, while it was a daunting project, and our defender is less… precise than the original (and, unfortunately, only stood strong for 36 hours), it was SO much fun (though we both needed several naps to recover after making it)!

Table of Contents

• The Gingerbread
• Cutting out & Baking the Pieces
• Making the Sugar Windows
• Making Caramel Glue
• Using Caramel Glue
• Making Royal Icing
• Piping the Details
• The Wheels
• Final Thoughts

The Gingerbread

To make this Gingerbread Defender, I opted to use a different gingerbread dough to the one I would normally use for my gingerbread structures. My typical gingerbread recipe (that isn’t really gingerbread at all) is on the softer, thicker side, which I didn’t think would be suitable for a super detailed, complex project like this.

Instead, I used my favourite, proper gingerbread recipe, which is the Light Gingerbread Dough by Mima Sinclair, from her book Gingerbread Wonderland. I love the taste of this dough and it works so well for building— you can roll it very thin and bake it until it’s super dry, so it is nice and strong. I made one batch of the dough and it was more than enough for this project (I had a bit leftover, which I used to make a bunch of tiny gingerbread house pieces, using these cookie cutters from Søstrene Grene).

Cutting out & Baking the Pieces

It was at this point, when I was painstakingly cutting out the template pieces with a craft knife, that I began to wonder if this whole thing was a mistake. Cutting out the templates was rough and all I could think about the whole time was how I had to do it all over again, but with gingerbread dough.

To be honest, though, cutting the pieces out of gingerbread ended up being easier than cutting the paper templates out. Go figure. Freezing the rolled out dough before cutting them out helped hugely, so I’d definitely do that again in the future!

I also froze all of the cut-out pieces for about 15 minutes before baking, to help limit any spreading. After cutting out all of the pieces, I baked them at 140°C for 8-20 minutes, depending on the size of the pieces on the tray (I did try to group pieces of a similar size together, so they baked evenly). The lower oven temperature helps to fully dry out the gingerbread, without it browning too quickly, so it can be used for building.

I did get a bit of spreading, though, so I just made sure to use a small, serrated knife to trim down all of the important, structural pieces as soon as they came out of the oven, before the gingerbread hardened too much. I just placed the corresponding template on top of each piece and trimmed around it as best as I could.

Making the Sugar Windows

Now onto the most exciting part of this project (for me, at least): the sugar windows! I’ve never actually made sugar windows in any of my previous gingerbread projects, so this was something entirely new for me and I think it worked SO WELL!

I’ve heard of using crushed boiled sweets before, but a) clear boiled sweets are a little tricky to come by these days and b) what are you supposed to do if your gingerbread spreads in the oven? However, the tutorial supplied a different method, where you make a sugar syrup, cook it to hard crack stage and pour it into the window spaces of the cooled, baked gingerbread pieces. I followed the instructions exactly (although I used glucose syrup instead of corn syrup) and they turned out perfectly. Overall, the process was much easier than I expected it to be and I can definitely see myself doing this again. LOVED this.

Making Caramel Glue

Using caramel to stick a gingerbread structure together is something I’ve seen a lot of (mainly on Bake Off, let’s be real), but never actually done myself. I’ve heard caramel glue is stronger than royal icing, so it seemed like a necessary step for this more complex project.

I used the recipe for ‘Caramel Glue’ from the same Gingerbread Wonderland book, and it only took 2 attempts to get right (I accidentally crystallised the first batch). I actually took the caramel off the heat before it was done and it continued cooking in the pan so much that within a minute it was very nearly burnt! However, I just caught it in time and from then on I had no problems with keeping it at the right consistency: I just set it over a very low heat while we assembled the car.

Using Caramel Glue

The caramel glue was… a little hard to use. The tutorial said to brush it onto the pieces, but this was actually quite tricky? I also don’t think it worked as well as I expected it to at keeping the pieces stuck together— there was definitely some movement (the back wheel fell off about 10 times)! My biggest problem with the caramel glue, though, was the weeping! I wonder if our kitchen environment is just too humid for using caramel, because it got quite sticky (making the joins less secure), it wept quite a bit (actually through the royal icing overnight, which made it look like… brown snow… which is not the vibe at all) and the icing didn’t stick so well over the top, which was a whole thing. Also, after a day and a half, our Gingerbread Defender did, sadly, collapse (RIP). Overall, I feel caramel glue should work well for gingerbread assembly and I’m very glad that I’ve tried it (a new skill!), but I think I’ll stick to my faithful royal icing in the future!

Also, a quick note here, I think you need more caramel glue than the tutorial calls for! I ran out towards the end, which was a bit stressful. I could have just made more, but I was kind of sick of it by that point…

Making Royal Icing

The original tutorial suggests using a thick glacé icing for this project, but I decided to use a royal icing instead, because it would dry hard and I think it’s just better for piping finer details. To make the icing, I just whisked together 400g of icing sugar, 2 egg whites and 2 tsp of lemon juice until smooth and thick. I ended up using about 3/4 of the icing in total.

Piping the Details

I… am not the best at piping fine line work (I blame my shaky hands). I think, together though, we did pretty well! I’d still like to practise this a little more, and I think I probably should have used a slightly finer piping tip for extra precision, but it’s pretty recognisable as a car, right?

Also, piping the icicles was a lot of fun. That was my favourite part! Let’s not talk about the huge gob of icing I managed to drop on the back wheel though… that was an unfortunate mistake…

The Wheels

The wheels gave us the most strife, which was unfortunate, seeing as they are supposed to bear the weight of the whole structure (which I still can’t quite fathom). We ran into lots of problems with the wheels: one ended up all tilted after the attached skewer slipped in the caramel while it was setting, one snapped off its skewer after I dropped it (that was obviously my fault), the skewers on the base of the car kept falling off (see aforementioned caramel troubles) and the whole wire-binding thing was troublesome and unsuccessful (for us, at least!).

Ultimately, we had to improvise. We ended up jacking the car up on a large hunk of marzipan (pictured above, camouflaged by hastily applied royal icing!), then removing the wheels from their smaller skewers and just propping them up against the central skewers, in the right position. We also covered the serving board in a thin layer of royal icing, so that the marzipan/wheels had something to stick into, then attached the car to the marzipan with a little more icing. The marzipan we used was golden marzipan, so it was quite visible and, at the last moment, I decided to try and human pretzel myself so that I could cover it in royal icing, while it was under the car. If you’re doing this, you should definitely add the icing before you put the car on top.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I was SO proud of our (slightly wonky) Landrover. She was a bit askew, she was a bit weepy and she was a bit improvised, but she’s one of the most complicated gingerbread projects I’ve ever undertaken, so I’m still very pleased with the whole experience. Making it was a chaotic process, but it was a lot of fun (and I definitely couldn’t have done it by myself— thank you, Amy!).

Here’s what I learned…

• Freezing sheets of the rolled out dough is a game-changer and makes cutting out the more detailed pieces SO much easier.
• Caramel Glue is not my vibe. I tried it, I had fun (and only burned myself twice), but it’s not for me.
• Sugar windows on the other hand, are absolutely my vibe and I want to make them all of the time. Will they be fun to eat? Probably not. Do they look absolutely incredible? Yes, yes they do.
• Icing covers a multitude of sins. Truly, once we added the decorative icing onto the car, it looked 1000x better (until the caramel weeped through, but we don’t talk about that).
• And, additionally, icing sugar covers even more sins! After the caramel weeped, I dusted the whole thing liberally with icing sugar for the photos and it really worked wonders.
• Use a smaller piping tip than you think for detail work. Also, speed is your friend when it comes to piping straight lines.
• Snowflake sprinkles make everything look festive. You can’t argue with the facts.

And that was my gingerbread undertaking for 2024! I learned a lot, I had a lot of fun and I fully intend to never make a Gingerbread Defender again.

Gemma

xxx

Bread and butter pudding is a quintessentially English dessert that… can sound a bit wacky if you’re not used to it. It’s essentially layers of (stale) bread that are spread with butter, sprinkled with sugar and dried fruit, then soaked in a simple custard mixture before being baked until golden and puffed. To the uninitiated, that might not sound great, but I love it! If it helps, you can just think of it as a big, baked version of French Toast— it’s a very similar concept!

Anyway, I wanted to make a festive variation on a traditional bread and butter pudding, so I created this: my Cranberry & Orange Bread and Butter Pudding. The cranberries are soaked in a zesty, orange syrup before being added to the dish, while the custard is lightly spiced with allspice and nutmeg for a super Christmassy, warming flavour. This recipe makes a great dessert, but I also really enjoy having it for breakfast too— it would make a perfect Christmas Eve/Day breakfast/brunch!

Ingredients

To make this festive bread and butter pudding, you’ll need the following ingredients:

• Bread

You can use lots of different types of bread for this: a plain, white sliced bread works well, or you can use an enriched loaf, such a challah or brioche, for an extra special pudding! The bread needs to be stale, so, if you can, slice the bread in advance and leave the slices out overnight before making the pudding. In a pinch, though, I find a very gentle toasting can also work!

Some people like to remove the crusts off the bread for this recipe, but I quite like the texture they give. Do whatever works for you!

• Unsalted butter

I prefer using unsalted butter when baking, so that I can control the amount of salt. The butter needs to be softened/at room temperature, so it is spreadable. You can use salted, if that’s what you have, but I would recommend omitting the extra salt if you do this.

• Caster sugar

I prefer using caster sugar, instead of granulated sugar, because it dissolves more easily into the pudding, giving the inner, custard-y section a lovely, smooth texture, while still achieving a crispy outer crust.

• Milk

I like to use a 50:50 ratio of milk to cream for my bread and butter pudding, for the perfect combination of rich and creamy, but also light and fluffy. Whole milk is best, but you can use skimmed/semi-skimmed too, if that’s what you have.

• Cream

Use double cream for the best results.

• Eggs

I always use large eggs.

• Dried cranberries

This is where we start getting festive! I prefer to use unsweetened cranberries, but you can use whatever you would like.

• Orange

You’ll need both the zest and the juice for this recipe.

• Ground allspice

The first of the festive spices in this pudding, allspice lends a gentle warmth to the custard.

• Nutmeg

I prefer to buy nutmeg whole and grate it fresh whenever I need it, rather than buy the ready-ground stuff.

• Salt

Just a little pinch of fine sea salt, to help bring out all of the flavours. If you’re using salted butter, leave this out.

• Vanilla extract

Because this is a custard-based dish, it’s good to add a little vanilla extract to counter any potential egginess.

Method

Bread and butter pudding is so simple to make— it’s essentially just an assembly job! Grease the baking dish with butter (truly, don’t skip this step— It makes the clean up so much easier!), so it’s all ready for you, then get making. You can use any oven-safe dish for this— I’ve used a standard pie dish here, but I often make this recipe in a rectangular baking dish (18 x 27 x 5cm), which works really well too, so use whatever you have that’s roughly that kind of size!

For this recipe, you need to start by soaking the cranberries. Place them into a small saucepan, along with the orange zest and juice, plus a heaped teaspoon of sugar.

Place the saucepan over medium heat and stir frequently while the sugar melts and the liquid comes to a boil. Allow the mixture to bubble for about 30 seconds, then remove the pan from the heat and set aside to cool.

While the cranberries are cooling, you can start preparing the pudding. Spread the stale bread slices thickly on one side with the butter, making sure to use every last bit!

Next, cut the bread slices into whatever shape you would like: triangles (like I’ve done here) are popular, but cubes can also work well!

Place half of the bread slices, butter-side up, into your greased baking dish, trying your best to cover the bottom in an even layer (do a better job than me, if you can). Don’t worry about arranging the bread too nicely at this stage, as there’s another layer of bread to come!

Sprinkle half of the caster sugar evenly over the bread layer, then scatter over all of the cooled, soaked cranberries (along with any orange-y juices). The reason you add all of the dried fruit at this stage is so that it is sandwiched between the two bread layers, so it won’t burn in the oven.

Now you can top up the dish with the remaining bread pieces, again, placing them butter-side up. This will form the top of your pudding, so, if you want it to look extra fancy, arrange your bread pieces in a nice pattern (I went for this starry situation, because it is Christmas, after all).

Evenly sprinkle over the remaining sugar, then set the dish aside while you prepare the custard.

Place the eggs into a bowl.

Whisk the eggs well.

Add the milk and cream, then whisk again until completely incorporated.

Strain the mixture through a sieve into a jug. This removes any stringy bits of egg to ensure that the baked custard will be silky smooth. Don’t skip this step!

Once the custard has been strained, add the ground allspice, freshly grated nutmeg, salt and vanilla extract. Mix well to combine.

Pour the custard mixture evenly over the bread in the baking dish, then set aside at room temperature for 30 minutes, so that the bread can absorb some of the custard.

You want to make sure the bread slices are submerged in the custard during the resting period, so gently press down on them from time to time, if needed, until the time is up and they have absorbed lots of the delicious custard.

Once the pudding has stood for 30 minutes, you can bake it for 45-55 minutes at 170°C (conventional oven, not fan), until golden and puffed. Allow the pudding to stand for 5 minutes before serving (the pudding will deflate slightly as it cools).

Variations

• Milk or Cream

I like to use a 50:50 ratio of milk to cream in my bread and butter puddings, but you can use any ratio you want! Using 100% cream makes for a really luxurious, rich and heavy dessert, while using 100% milk makes for a lighter, less dense bake. A 50:50 ratio gives you the best of both worlds, but any ratio will work. Often, if I have a small amount of cream to use up, I’ll just put it in a jug, then make it up to 570ml with milk.

• Fruit

I’ve used cranberries here, to make this super seasonal, but you could use any kind of dried fruit you like. If you plan to use larger dried fruits (such as apricots or figs), I’d recommend chopping them finely before adding them to the dish. If you’re an anti-dried fruit kind of person, you can leave them out, or substitute them with chopped nuts or chocolate chips!

• Spices

I’ve included allspice and nutmeg in this bread and butter pudding recipe, to make it extra Christmassy and warming, but you can omit the spices if you’d prefer a fresher, fruitier taste.

Make-Ahead

Bread and butter pudding can be made ahead in a variety of different ways to suit your festive needs:

• Once baked, the pudding can be stored in the fridge for 2-3 days. Simply warm through individual servings in the microwave, or the whole lot in the oven, when you’re ready to serve it (apparently, it is also very delicious cold, but I can’t say I’ve ever tried that!).
• If you want to bake the pudding at the last minute, you can store the unbaked pudding (covered) in the fridge for up to 24 hours. You can bake it cold from the fridge, but it will need a little longer in the oven.

Making the pudding ahead means you can have delicious, festive bread & butter pudding at any time during the holiday season— even on Christmas morning!

Recipe

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Cranberry & Orange Bread and Butter Pudding

A classic bread and butter pudding, turned into a delicious, festive dessert/breakfast with cranberries, fresh orange and warming spices.

Course Breakfast, Dessert

Cuisine British

Keyword Allspice, Bread and butter pudding, Cranberry, Custard, Nutmeg, Orange

Prep Time 25 minutes minutes

Cook Time 55 minutes minutes

Resting time 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 50 minutes minutes

Servings 6 servings

Equipment

• 1 oven-safe baking dish (a standard pie dish OR a rectangular baking dish, about 18 x 27 x 5cm)

Ingredients

• 60 g unsweetened dried cranberries
• 1 orange, zest and juice.
• 50 g + 1 heaped tsp caster sugar
• 60 g unsalted butter, softened (plus extra for greasing).
• 215 g stale bread, sliced (see Note 1).
• 2 eggs
• 285 ml milk (see Note 2).
• 285 ml double cream (see Note 2).
• 1/8 tsp ground allspice
• 1/16 tsp nutmeg, freshly grated.
• 1 splash vanilla extract
• 1 pinch fine sea salt

Instructions

• Grease the baking dish with butter and set aside. Don't preheat the oven just yet (the bread and butter pudding needs to stand for 30 minutes before baking). The pudding will be baked at 170°C (conventional, not fan).
• Place the cranberries, orange zest and juice, and the heaped tsp of caster sugar into a small saucepan over medium heat. Stirring frequently, bring to the boil, then cook for a further 30 seconds before removing from the heat and setting aside to cool.
• Spread the bread slices thickly with the butter, then cut into your desired shapes.
• Arrange half of the bread pieces, butter-side up, in the greased baking dish. Sprinkle over half of the remaining sugar, along with all of the cooled, soaked cranberries (and any liquid). Arrange the remaining bread pieces on top, butter-side up, sprinkle over the remaining sugar, then set aside while you make the custard.
• For the custard, whisk the eggs together in a bowl until combined. Add the milk and cream, then whisk well. Pour the mixture through a fine sieve into a jug, to remove any stringy bits of egg.
• Add the allspice, nutmeg, vanilla and salt to the custard and mix well.
• Pour the custard evenly over the bread, then leave to stand at room temperature for 30 minutes before baking.
• Bake the pudding at 170°C for 45-55 minutes, until golden and puffed. Allow the baked pudding to stand for 5-10 minutes before serving warm.

Notes

1. You can use lots of different types of bread for this recipe: plain, white, sliced bread works well, as do enriched breads such as challah and brioche. It needs to be stale to absorb the custard well. You can either leave the crusts on or cut them off— it’s entirely up to you.
2. I use a 50:50 ratio of milk:cream, but you can use any ratio you would like, as long as the total quantity of liquid adds up to 570ml.

Make Ahead

Once baked, the pudding can be stored in the fridge for 2-3 days. Simply reheat to serve. 

You can also store the unbaked pudding (covered) in the fridge for up to 24 hours. Bake the pudding from chilled, but be aware that it will likely need a little longer in the oven. 

Anddddd we’re back with another instalment of my Baking Around the World series, where I (attempt to) bake delicious, sweet treats from around the globe, in an attempt to broaden my foodie horizons! This time, we’re off to Iceland, with these Marens-Kornflexkökur.

A quick Baking Around the World disclaimer before we get into the recipe:

While I have done/will do extensive research for each of the recipes in this series, the recipes are unlikely to be 100% authentic because of differences in ingredient availability, variations within families/regions and multiple other reasons. I'm so sorry if I absolutely butcher your favourite childhood treat (and please let me know in the comments if I have made any unforgiveable errors), but please do give me the benefit of the doubt here- I am just a baker with a serious sweet tooth, trying to broaden her baking (and cultural) horizons through tasty snacks :)

Table of Contents

• Marens-Kornflexkökur: Explained
• Ingredients
• Making Marens-Kornflexkökur
• Final Thoughts
• Recipe
• Sources Used

Marens-Kornflexkökur: Explained

These Icelandic treats are really super simple— they’re just regular meringues, flavoured with a little vanilla extract and studded with chopped dark chocolate and cornflakes. I realise that sounds a bit wacky, but they actually taste really good! You don’t bake them in quite the same way as you would a normal meringue, so they don’t fully dry out and stay nice and chewy on the inside, but crisp on the outside, so you can eat them on their own, like a cookie!

I’ve had meringues containing chopped dark chocolate in in the past, so I wasn’t too fazed by that part, but I have to admit, the cornflakes were a little bit of a curveball (and the thing that drew me to this recipe in the first place)! They go quite chewy in the meringue and add a nutty (corn-y?) taste. They’re not for everyone (not all of my family members were on board with this particular bake), but I really like them!

Strangely, it’s quite hard to find information about these cookies (from authentic, Icelandic sources) online. I wonder if, because they’re so simple (only 6 ingredients!) they’re more of a passed-down-through-families kind of recipe, kind of like how we have chocolate cornflake cakes in the UK? I’m not sure, but I do know that I ended up in the deepest depths of the Icelandic baking forums in my attempt to confirm that these were, in fact, a classic, Icelandic cookie (and they are! Though, like most traditional cookies, they seem to come in various different forms).

Traditionally, Marens-Kornflexkökur are made using the French meringue method, which is the simplest of the meringue-making styles. In this method, you add the sugar to the egg whites gradually, whisking all the time, until fully incorporated and the sugar has dissolved. I, however, seem to have a curse that prevents me from being able to make French meringue successfully, so I have adapted the process ever so slightly, taking inspiration from the meringue-making method created by the Meringue Girls. The only difference is that you warm the sugar slightly before adding it to the egg whites, which helps it to dissolve more quickly and create a stable meringue. It is a little extra step, but it’s really changed the meringue game for me!

As you can see, the Marens-Kornflexkökur do still bake up with some pretty dramatic cracks, but I think that’s inevitable with so many extra ingredients mixed in (or at least, I’ll tell myself that to avoid yet another French meringue-induced breakdown…)! Anyway, I think it kind of adds to their charm, so I’m not mad about it.

Ingredients

Marens-Kornflexkökur only require 6 ingredients, which is part of what makes them so simple and easy to make! You will need:

• Caster sugar

It’s important to use caster/superfine sugar, so that it dissolves quickly and evenly into the meringues.

• Egg whites

Make sure that you don’t get any yolk in your egg whites when you separate them, or you’ll have to start over. As always, I use large eggs.

• Salt

A small amount of fine sea salt is added to the egg whites as they whip, to help give them structure. I also like to sprinkle a small amount of coarse sea salt onto the meringues, once they’re baked (and drizzled with chocolate). However, if you plan to store the meringues for a while, I would skip this step, as the salt crystals do have a tendency to leave weird, salty, water-y droplets on top of your cookies over time!

• Cornflakes

Just regular old cornflakes! Use your favourite brand (or whatever’s on offer…).

• Dark chocolate

Use a good quality dark chocolate for the best results. I use this in two ways: firstly (and more traditionally) chopped into chunks and mixed into the macarons, then secondly (less traditionally, but very deliciously) melted and drizzled on top of the finished cookies. I took inspiration from Kate from veggiedesserts.com for this step!

• Vanilla extract

As with the dark chocolate, good quality vanilla extract will give the best flavour. You only need a small amount.

You will also need a small amount of vinegar (I use white wine vinegar) to wipe down the bowl/whisk attachment of your stand mixer. This is an important step, because it removes any little traces of fat in your machine, which might otherwise prevent the egg whites from whipping up properly!

Making Marens-Kornflexkökur

To make the Marens-Kornflexkökur, start by preheating the oven to 135°C. Line a tray with baking paper and set aside.

As I mentioned, I used a slightly adapted version of the French meringue method for this bake, so stay with me on this one! The first thing you want to do is to put the caster sugar into a frying pan. Shake it out into an even layer, then set over a low heat to warm gently.

You don’t want the sugar to melt, you just want to warm it slightly so that it dissolves into the egg whites more easily. Let it warm while you get everything else ready and it will be perfect. If you give it a shake, you might notice it sticking to the pan ever so slightly, like in the photo above.

With the sugar warming, you can get on with preparing the chocolate and the cornflakes. Finely chop the chocolate. Aim for small chunks— you want pockets of chocolate-y goodness, but you don’t want the chunks to be so big that they sink in the meringues.

Then, lightly crush the cornflakes. I just used my hands, but you could also do this with the back of a spoon, the end of a rolling pin, or even in a mortar and pestle! You just want to break them up a little bit, so that they can be distributed more evenly throughout the meringues and don’t get too chewy (you want them to be chewy, but not unswallowable).

With those ingredients prepared, it’s time to get on with the meringue.

Start by wiping out the metal bowl and the whisk attachment of a stand mixer with a little vinegar (I use white wine vinegar). This helps to clean the utensils by removing any traces of fat, which will prevent the egg whites from whipping up properly. It’s important to use a metal bowl, because that helps the egg whites whip up too!

Place the egg whites, along with a pinch of salt, into the mixer bowl and fit the whisk attachment.

Whisk on high speed until the egg whites reach soft peaks.

At this point, remove the frying pan from the heat and begin adding the warm sugar to the mixer bowl, a little at a time, while whisking on high speed.

Once all of the sugar has been added, stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl, so that all of the sugar crystals are in the meringue mixture.

At this point, the meringue will be very shiny and glossy, but not overly stiff, so keep whisking on high speed until the meringue holds stiff peaks.

Once the meringue has reached stiff peaks, it’s ready! If you rub a small amount of the mixture between your fingers, you shouldn’t be able to feel any sugar crystals.

Now, you can mix in the other ingredients. Start by folding in the vanilla.

Then, add the crushed cornflakes and the chopped chocolate.

Fold through again, and the mixture is ready!

Drop tablespoon-sized dollops of the mixture onto the lined baking tray. Don’t worry about getting them perfect— they’re supposed to look rustic, like snowy mountains!

Once you’ve used all of the mixture, place the tray into the preheated oven and bake for 25-30 minutes, until the surface of the meringues is crisp and the cookies are holding their shape.

Allow the Marens-Kornflexkökur to cool completely on the trays, then serve as they are, or decorate them by drizzling with a little melted dark chocolate and sprinkling with coarse sea salt. Allow the chocolate to set at room temperature before serving.

Stored in an airtight container at room temperature, the cookies will keep for about 2 weeks. If you plan to make these in advance, I would recommend not sprinkling them with the coarse sea salt, as it can cause little droplets of water to form on the chocolate if left for too long!

Final Thoughts

These Marens-Kornflexkökur are made with a combination of ingredients that I would never have thought to combine, but I actually really like the results! The cookies are chewy, crispy and super tasty. They also taste super festive, despite not containing any of the classic Christmas spices I associate with ‘tasting festive’.

They’re super easy to make, but it did take me a few tries to nail this recipe (mainly as a result of my French meringue curse)! You want to bake them for a short enough time that they stay nice and chewy, but it is also easy to underbake them, which can lead to squidgy cookies that don’t hold their shape. I’m glad I stuck with them though, because I think I’m finally making a breakthrough with meringue!

As I mentioned, these probably aren’t for everyone. The texture of the cornflakes is quite unusual and, overall, they are a pretty sweet cookie (even with the dark chocolate!), which makes them perfect for me, but not so perfect for those who don’t have much of a sweet tooth. I liked them, but, much like the Indian Kulkuls, I’m not sure they live up to the dreamy, almond cookies of last year’s festive, Baking Around the World instalments!

Have you ever had eeMarens-Kornflexkökur before? Or have you ever tried meringues with cornflakes mixed in? Let me know!

Gemma

xxx

Recipe

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Marens-Kornflexkökur

These Icelandic, festive meringue cookies are flavoured with vanilla and studded with chopped dark chocolate and crushed cornflakes. They're crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside and super easy to bake, making them a perfect sweet treat.

Course Dessert, Snack

Cuisine Icelandic

Keyword Cornflakes, Dark Chocolate, Meringue, Vanilla

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour

Servings 12 cookies

Ingredients

• White wine vinegar, for wiping down the bowl/whisk.
• 150 g caster sugar
• 2 egg whites (I used large eggs).
• 1 pinch fine sea salt
• 1 splash vanilla extract
• 60 g dark chocolate
• 30 g cornflakes

To decorate (optional):

• 15 g dark chocolate, melted
• Coarse sea salt

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 135°C. Line a baking tray with baking paper and set aside.
• Place the sugar into a frying pan, shaking it out into an even layer. Place over low heat and leave to warm while you prepare the other ingredients. You don't want the sugar to melt, just to warm up slightly so that it dissolves into the egg whites more easily.
• Finely chop the dark chocolate and lightly crush the cornflakes.
• Wipe down the metal bowl and whisk attachment of a stand mixer with white wine vinegar to remove any traces of fat. Place the egg whites in the bowl, along the fine sea salt.
• Whisk the egg whites on high speed, until they reach soft peaks.
• Once all of the sugar has been added, turn off the mixer and use a spatula to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Then turn the mixer back on to high speed and whisk the meringue until stiff peaks form. When it's ready, you should be able to rub a small amount of the meringue between your fingers without feeling any sugar crystals.
• Fold the vanilla extract into the meringue, then add the chopped dark chocolate and crushed cornflakes and fold again, until evenly distributed.
• Place tablespoon-sized dollops of the meringue mixture onto the prepared baking tray. Once you have used up all of the mixture, place the tray into the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes, until the surface of the meringues feels crisp and the cookies hold their shape.
• Allow the meringues to cool completely on the tray before serving/decorating. The cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 weeks.

To decorate (optional):

• Drizzle the cooled meringue cookies with the melted dark chocolate, then sprinkle with coarse sea salt (see Note 1). Allow to sit at room temperature until the chocolate has set, then serve.

Notes

1. If you are decorating the cookies in advance, I would recommend skipping the coarse sea salt. The salt crystals can cause little droplets of water to form on the surface of the chocolate if left for too long, which, while they don’t affect the taste, don’t look super pretty!

Sources Used

Saveur: Christmas in Iceland

Saveur: Icelandic Chocolate Cornflake Cookies

Guide to Iceland: Icelandic Sweets and Confectionery

Artic Adventures: Traditional Icelandic Christmas Food

Bland: Marengs Kökur

Gulur Raudur Grænn & Salt: Kornflex smákökur

Veggie Desserts: Icelandic Christmas Meringue Cookies

Baking with Nessa: Icelandic Christmas Cookies “Marens-Kornflexkökur”

Arctic Adventures: Icelandic Christmas

Roaming Taste: Marens-Kornflexkökur