It really isn’t Christmas without a party, and without a party there is no (real) excuse for festive baking or, more importantly, festive boozing. Our flat’s having one such party tomorrow night, courtesy of our Germanic part-planner who sadly leaves the Big Smoke next week. In preparation, I spent last night trying out a new Christmas cookie recipe [baked while watching Love, Actually to get me in the mood]. Having sampled some of the results I can testify that it’s worth sharing, so here it is:
Discovered via googling ‘cinnamon biscuits’ and landing here, I amended slightly to suit my cinnamon fetish tendencies…
Christmas in biscuit form
150g (5 oz) self-rising flour
150g (5 oz) plain flour
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
125g (4 ½ oz) butter
100g (3 ¾ oz) sugar
1 egg beaten
Caster Sugar & cinnamon – for sprinkling
1. Set oven at 160 degrees C (Gas Mark 3).
2. Sift flours and cinnamon into a large bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, mix butter and sugar until smooth. Add egg and mix well.
4. Stir in the dry ingredients and mix into firm dough. Lift on to a lightly floured board, knead until smooth.
5. Roll to 5mm thickness and cut into shapes.
6. Sprinkle sugar & cinnamon onto a plate and coat biscuits before placing on baking sheet.
7. Bake in the preheated oven until light golden colour, 10 to 15 minutes. Let cool and harden.
As an afterthought, this morning I decided to add a drizzling of cinnamon icing – not too much, just enough to make them even sweeter and even more cinnamony [as I said, it’s an obsession].
For all parties, it is obligatory to have booze. At Christmas, this is often of a spiced, mulled and hot variety, but why not branch out and go cold? So cold, that it actually involves ice cream. You may recall that at my first ever Thanksgiving the other week, I had my first ever egg nog – I now have the recipe, so I’ll share it with you:
D’s Holiday Egg Nog
(It’s an American holiday so obvs, it’s an American recipe.)
(Also, it sounds lethal, but it’s yummy – honest!)
12 eggs – separated
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. Salt
2 tbsp. Nutmeg
2 cups bourbon
2 oz. Rum (The Booze is optional! Most of the time he makes a mixture of bourbon, rum, and brandy.)
½ c. powdered sugar
4 cups heavy cream
4 cups milk
½ gallon vanilla ice cream
1. Beat egg yolks until creamy; beat in sugar, salt, vanilla , and nutmeg. Beat in bourbon and rum slowly.
2. Whip egg whites until stiff peaks form, beating in powdered sugar. Add cream and milk to yolk mixture; fold in egg whites.
3. Then use beater as you add ice cream. (The ice cream makes it cold and frothy).
[The mixture can be made ahead and refrigerated for several hours – then add in the ice cream.]
Pour it into a classy glass, grate some nutmeg – et voila!!
Did you know that nutmeg is a hallucinogenic?
(Turns out you’d need to eat an awful lot before it took effect though…)
Those biscuits look yummy. Might just bake some of those for when my family arrive.