Christmas gingerbread

This is a wonderfully easy and tasty recipe that makes the kitchen smell amazing while the gingerbread is cooking, and looks lovely once decorated, and possibly strung up in garlands around the house. They last well too, so can be packaged or boxed up and given to people as presents or when you have visitors over the Christmas period, and they'll continue to taste good!

To make 16-20 medium to large gingerbread biscuits you will need the following ingredients:

• 350g plain flour
• 75g caster sugar
• 75g dark soft brown sugar
• 100g unsalted butter
• 1 egg
• 3 tbsp golden syrup
• 1 tsp bicarbonate soda
• 2 tsps ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• a tiny pinch of salt
• Icing sugar, water, food colouring and sprinkles etc (if you fancy) for the biscuit decoration

Method:

1. Set the oven to 180 degrees C (350 F/gas mark 4) and simply mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl while making sure there are no lumps of dark brown sugar left in the mix.
2. Make a well in the middle and mix in all the remaining ingredients (a bit of olive oil on the measuring spoon stops the golden syrup from sticking), then using your hands form the mixture into a ball of dough.
3. Roll out the dough on a floured surface, with a floured rolling pin, until it's about 5mm thick.
4. Cut out your biscuits and remember to make holes in the top before they go into the oven if you are planning on hanging the biscuits up as decorations. Place on greased and lined baking trays and cook for 9-10 minutes, checking regularly until they are light golden brown.
5. Let the biscuits cool on the baking trays before turning them onto a wire cooling rack. Check to make sure the holes haven't closed up.
6. When they are completely cool, follow instuctions on the side of your icing sugar box to make icing and pipe onto the biscuits into Christmassy designs!

I went for "Merry Christmas" written on the gingerbread biscuits and strung up on string as a garland.

Alternatively, you can attach string or ribbon to individual biscuits and give them as smaller gifts for friends and family:

Have a SSSSSSSSSSuper Christmas!!

Salt dough Christmas decorations

Salt dough is a miracle. The fact that you can make this dough so easily and then use it to make any shaped and sized creation you like blows my mind.

I rustled up some dough a few days ago, then cut out some simple Christmassy shapes, cooked, painted and varnished them et voila! Some lovely, homely decorations!

To make your own salt dough decorations you will need:

• plain flour
• water
• salt
• mixing bowl
• rolling pin
• baking tray
• greaseproof paper
• a selection of cookie cutters
• skewer/kebab stick
• acrylic paint, poster paint or spray paint
• varnish
• paint brush
• thread (for hanging them)

1. Simply mix 2 cups of plain flour, 1 cup of salt and 1 cup of water in a bowl, and then knead on a lightly floured surface for 5-10 minutes (this makes it nice and smooth). Let the dough rest on the side for 20 minutes before rolling it out.
2. Roll out the dough to the thickness of a pound coin (or the thickness you require) and cut out the shapes using your chosen selection of cookie cutters, remembering to make a hole at the top of each shape with a skewer before they go into the oven.
3. Place the shapes on a baking try lined with greaseproof paper and cook in an oven no hotter than 80-90 degrees C (200F/Gas Mark ¼) - this cool oven will dry out the decorations rather than actually cook them - for about 3-4 hours. Or they can dry at room temperature, but that takes about 30 hours!

4. I used gold spray paint to colour my decorations after using a normal white emulsion as a base layer. This gave the gold a stronger effect. With adequate drying in between each layer, I then painted letters to spell out festive words on a few decorations in black acrylic paint, in order to make a few little garlands.

5. Last but not least came a layer of everyday varnish to seal the salt dough and make them last longer, threading some thread through the holes, and adorning the christmas tree with them!

Better late than never: Advent calendar!

The countdown to Christmas has now OFFICIALLY begun, despite the Coca Cola advert being aired on ITV nearly a month ago and triggering a mad, premature rush into Christmas. I almost can't quite believe it's December. Apart from being so mild for this time of year - I honestly saw a tree on my road with pink blossom on its branches this morning, what is going on with the weather!?! - where have the past 12 months gone? It only feels like a couple of months ago, at most, that Jim and I were choosing last year's advent calendar - it was a toss up between Winnie the Pooh and Toy Story. Oh decisions decisions...

Anyway, to save on such brain-aching dilemmas this year, a week ago I (optimistically) told Jim I would make him an advent calendar. So, using an old cork notice board, and delving into my box of fabric offcuts, I managed to pull together a few festive looking materials that I could cut, sew and glue into something resembling a 24-pocketed, chocolate-filled wall hanging.

All you need to undertake a similar project (probably best saved til this time next year now!) is:

• A cork board (mine was about 30x50cm and slightly on the small side if I'm honest)
• Drawing pins
• PVA glue
• Various bits of festive-coloured fabric and felt
• Ribbons, sequins and other decorations
• Pencil, paper, scissors, needle, pins and thread
• Chocolates!

I started by hemming a large stripey piece of fabric after pinning it in place with 4 drawing pins, so that it fitted exactly on the cork part of the board, inside the wooden frame (modelled by Ted the dog):

I then cut out 24 squares, using a paper template, from white and red felt to use as the pockets, after making sure they would all fit on the backing fabric.

Next, I drew several Christmassy templates onto paper and used these to cut out 24 shapes from scraps of fabric.

I positioned all the pieces of fabric on the cork board to make sure it all fitted before sewing/gluing anything in place (again, modelled by Ted):

Happy with this, I used some everyday PVA glue to stick the shapes securely onto the red and white squares. While waiting for these to dry I carefully pencilled in the numbers of the calendar onto the top right corner of each square to make sure they were all a similar size, before sewing over the pencil with black thread:

Next, to add a bit of detail I glued on a few red beads as berries on the holly shapes, some tiny gold stars onto the top of the christmas trees, and sewed some thin ribbon onto the present shapes:

All that was left to do was to fix everything together: starting with the main stripey piece of fabric I sewed the hem using the sewing machine, and then pinned all the squares in place, before sewing round the sides and bottom of them to make 24 pockets:

Finally, fill each pocket with some (preferably non-melting) chocolates and sweets and let the count-down begin!!