Gingerbread cookies:

My daughter wanted to bake gingerbread man cookies for this Christmas and she was asking for the recipe of the same. I finally gave her a recipe with the ingredients which were available in our pantry.Now I will handover this post to my daughter, who is 15 year old 🙂

Hi all, I am Vinushree. I really wanted some gingerbread cookies this year, and we made this unique version of gingerbread man cookies- but as women. I just wanted to bring out women empowerment. Just kidding, we didn’t have the cookie cutter for a man ;).  This was very fun to make and an easy process. Please enjoy.

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Ingredient:

All-purpose flour – 3 ½ cup

Cinnamon powder – 1 ½ tsp

Ginger powder – 1 ½ tsp

Salt – ½ tsp

Baking soda- ¾ tsp

Egg -1

Jaggery syrup – ½ cup

Light brown sugar – ½ cup

Cooking Butter – ¾ cup

For Icing:

Cooking chocolate – 4 squares

Nutella – 2 tbl sp

Icing sugar – ½ cup

Vanilla essence – ½ tsp

Milk – 2 tbl sp.

Method:

  • Mix all the dry ingredients by using wire whisk, like flour, cinnamon, ginger, salt, baking soda and keep aside.
  • Beat butter and sugar by using stand mixer. When it is done, add in egg, jaggery syrup and beat nicely.
  • Add dry ingredient and make dough into 3 parts and keep this in a fridge by wrapping in a cling film cover or in a zip lock separately.
  • Keep this for one hour and remove one of the dough parts from the fridge and keep this outside for 5 minutes.
  • At the same time, pre heat the oven at 170 degree C and line a cookie tray with butter paper.
  • Now roll the dough by using Chapati roller, by dusting some flour into ¼ inch thickness and by using cookie cutter and bake this for 12 to 14 minutes.

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  • After it cools down, make the icing.
  • Take one microwave safe glass bowl, put icing sugar, chocolate, Nutella, milk and vanilla. Microwave for 1 minute and mix nicely. If it is melted and perfectly blends, start dipping those cookies into it and decorate with any sprinkles. Otherwise heat chocolate mixture for some more time and proceed.

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  • Dry them in air for one to two hours, and then store them in an airtight container.

Christmas Fruit cake:

The day before yesterday, my daughter V asked, ‘Amma, everywhere I can feel the Christmassy atmosphere, why haven’t you made anything?  Please make a plum cake.”

Immediately, daughter A said, “No need to do that grrrrrrrrrrr, It has raisins; I don’t like raisins in any baked goodies. Make Red velvet instead of plum cake.”

Finally, mamma came up with this win-win cake for both –

This cake has no booze or fruit juice, or raisins.

Ingredients:

Dry fruits to soak – 1/2 to 1 cup (dried cranberries, tutti-frutti)

For the Caramel:

Light brown sugar – ½ cup

Water – ¾ cup

Butter – 1 tsp

For the Cake:

All-purpose flour – 1 ½ cups ( you can take whole wheat flour + all-purpose flour as well)

Baking powder – ¾ tsp

Baking soda – ¾ tsp

Dry ginger powder – ¼ tsp

Cinnamon powder – ¼ tsp

Cardamom powder – ¼ tsp

Pinch of salt

Eggs – 2

Melted Butter – ¾ cup

Fresh Orange rind – 1 to 2 tsp (grated)

Caramel – ½ cup

Dry Nuts – 1/4  cup (cashew and almonds)

Method:

-The next step is the preparation of the cake batter –

-First, we will mix all the dry ingredients, from flour, baking powder, baking soda, ginger powder, cinnamon powder, cardamom powder, and salt, in one bowl and dry mix using a wire whisk.

-Drop all the dry fruits like soaked and drained dry fruits, chopped cashews and almonds

-Once again, mix the flour nicely and keep it aside. This is the dry ingredient mixture.

-The next step is- to preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade.

-Line the cake tin in which you want to bake. I have used a bread tin over here.

-Next, we should make a wet ingredient mixture. Break the eggs, beat them properly, and mix in butter, caramel, sugar, and grated Orange rind. Beat all these together until the sugar dissolves.

-Take one wooden spatula, fold it in the dry mixture, and make a uniform batter of wet and dry ingredients with a very light hand. Don’t overmix this.

-Now pour this ready batter into the lined cake tin, sprinkle some cashew and almond chunks, and bake this for 40 to 45 minutes or until done at  180* C. Enjoy this fruit cake this festive season!!!