Happy New Year!

I wish everyone lots of fun tonight and a happy new year with these Danish tea-biscuits decorated with Sugar Belle’s 20-second icing technique.

The round-shaped cookies are sort of confetti and the triangular cookies are sort of party hats. :)))

Roasted Hazelnut Brownies

The brownie has been on my wish list for a long time now (since September :))) ) and I only had to wait until now.  

The opportunity showed itself as 1) at Christmas I have more time to bake; 2) I have a big family, who can try and test them and 3) my father has a huge stock of hazelnuts from last year.

I chose Jamie Oliver brownie recipe, but adapted to my taste.

Blueberry Panna Cotta

It seems I cannot take a break from making panna cotta. Here is a newbie, panna cotta with blueberry sauce.

I prepared the panna cotta just like I did with Cranberry Panna Cotta or with Panna Cotta with Mango Sauce.

Gingerbread Cookies

I received an amazing gingerbread cookie recipe from a kind neighbour of my grandma. It was SUPER EASY to prepare. Really. Last year I had a recipe, where the dough was so hard to handle that my wrist hurt at the end because of rolling out the dough. Not this time. I could have use only one finger to roll out the dough. It is definitely a keeper.

Christmas Panna Cotta

Let me start saying I LOVE PANNA COTTA. I could eat panna cotta every day. As Christmas is almost knocking at our doors, I decided to make my own Christmas panna cotta inspired by ginger bread cookies. :)))

Meringue Kisses

As there were 3 egg whites left after making a zabaglione, it is not a surprise that I made some meringues. 

Actually, I made meringue kisses at least that is how we call them in Hungary. I made two sorts: one with nuts, peanuts and almonds, the other one with dried cranberries and cinnamon.

Panattone with Zabaglione

Finally, I managed to try panattone, as I found a nice, small (100g) packet in the supermarket. Compared to a 1 kg packet, I saw all the time.

As I heard from my Milanese colleague, pandoro is the traditional Christmas pastry for Verona, but panattone is from Milan.

Danish Tea-Biscuits for a Baby Shower

This week I had another excuse to make sugar cookies as we were invited to an almost baby shower party. Almost as the due date is still 3 weeks ahead and the almost new parents wanted just a small get together before the baby comes. Anyway, it was a good excuse for me to surprise them.

I baked the sugar cookies on Friday and decorated them on Saturday.

My first intention was to bake the same sugar cookies as the Santa Clause cookies, but I changed my mind and made some vanilla cookies. They all tasted like those Danish tea-biscuits that they sell in red, round-shape metal boxes. As my husband is not fond of marzipan and almond flavour ( - I really do not understand why - ), he just loved these vanilla cookies. So here comes the recipe

Snowflakes Cookies

I needed the following:

- royal icing (piping and flooding),

- Wilton #2,

- piping bag,

- blue food colouring,

- toothpick.

Reindeer Cookies

I needed the following:

- royal icing (piping and flooding),

- sugar pearls,

- Wilton #2,

- piping bag,

- brown and red food colouring,

- toothpick.

Santa Clause Cookie

I needed the following:

- royal icing (piping and flooding),

- sugar pearls,

- Wilton #2 and #16,

- piping bag,

- red food colouring,

- toothpick.

Snowman Cookies

I needed the following:

- royal icing (piping and flooding),

- sugar pearls,

- Wilton #2,

- piping bag,

- brown food colouring,

- toothpick.

Sugar Cookie and Royal Icing Recipes

As sugar cookie is very popular just as cupcakes there were a tons of recipes. My favourite sugar cookie decorating blog so far is "The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle" I wanted to try her basic sugar cookie recipe.

Again I struggled was the amount of the ingredients as I did not need 100 cookies. After all I came up with the below, from which I made 16 reindeers, 12 Santa Clauses, 8 snowflakes and 8 snowmen.

Sugar Cookies for Santa Clause

I have been playing with the idea for some time now to try decorating sugar cookies. Mainly, after I came across "The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle". She is amazing.

As it was my first time and it took me a day to figure out things, to bake, to prepare icing and to decorate, I had no more time today to write a post. 

Vanilla Custard

After my first encounter with the pandoro, two weeks later we brought our second pandoro. As in one of the Hungarian comments Vica said that it is amazing with vanilla custard, I made some this time.

The basic vanilla custard is egg yolk, sugar and milk. Nothing else. Of course, you can add some vanilla extract or beans if you want.

So, I gathered up myself to prepare a fabulous breakfast for my husband.