christmas Archives - Ever So Sweet Blog

15 December 2014

Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies – Cookie Swap!

By Kirsty @ Ever So Sweet| Chocolate, Cookies

Tis the season for gift giving. Even better if those gifts are baked, sweet and delicious! That’s why as soon as I found a cookie swap that was open to people in the UK I thought…where so I sign up! The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap is hosted by Love & Olive Oil & The Little Kitchen and all money raised goes towards the US based Cookies for Kids Cancer charity.

The cookies I made this year come from the Top with Cinnamon cookbook, but with a little spin on the recipe, of course. I adore malt flavoured things, especially biscuits – those really plain Malted Milk biscuits are one of my favourites – so I opted to add a little malt powder and I didn’t bother browning the butter because a) I’m a little lazy and b) I didn’t want to distract from the malt and the chocolate by over complicating things.

A little side note about the chocolate is that I picked up a bag of chocolate chips from a local Chocolatier, based here in Inverness town centre. The Chocolate Place is a lovely little shop at the end of Academy Street with some delicious looking chocolate gifts, perfect for stocking fillers! Take a look at their website as they have an online shop which delivers throughout the country. The chocolate chips were great, I always go for dark chocolate in baking and these had a deep flavour with that hint of bitterness that you need. (more…)

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19 December 2013

12 Days of Christmas – Homemade Cards

By Kirsty @ Ever So Sweet| Crafts

Generally when it comes to Christmas I’m not at all organised. This year I’m pretty impressed with myself, I’ve got all of my presents bought, wrapped and most of my homemade presents are finished. Now all that’s left to do is count the days I have left of work before the holidays – ONE DAY LEFT!

Whilst we’re on the subject of present wrapping I wanted to show you the theme I went with this year. As mentioned in the last Mid-week Moment post the colour scheme was gold and white, a change from my usual red and white. It was the tags that inspired the whole look, which were bought in Fortnum and Mason, only to be found a few weeks later much cheaper in John Lewis, where I found the wrapping paper. I was delighted when I spotted the wrapping paper because it is exactly what I wanted. The only problem is it was a nightmare to wrap, the glitter goes everywhere! It was worth it though, look how pretty they look. So sorry to everyone whose floor I mess up on Christmas day!

Christmas cards are always my downfall and I’m certainly never organised to be able to use second class stamps, those people whose cards you receive on the 5th of December, that will never be me! As always, I’m late with my cards this year too, but they are homemade for the first time so I think that excuses any tardiness. (more…)

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12 December 2013

12 Days of Christmas – Stollen

By Kirsty @ Ever So Sweet| Bread, Breakfast, Fruit

On the second day of Christmas, Bake Good gave to me…Stollen! Yeah, not exactly how the song goes but you get the picture. Don’t worry, I won’t make that joke for all twelve posts, I don’t think anyway.

My mum had requested I make stollen when I’m back home for Christmas, so I thought I better get a practice run in beforehand to avoid disappointment. As usual, I brought this in to work to save eating the whole loaf myself, which could have happened because it tastes amazing! To my surprise, although it went down well, almost nobody had actually heard of stollen before. I assumed everyone had this in their cupboards at Christmas but perhaps it was just my family! Basically it is a dense, sweet fruit bread filled with marzipan. According to my sources (read: Wikipedia) it is originally from Germany.

There were various recipes, some using plain flour and some with bread flour, different levels of spice, different fruits, with and without nuts. Complicated. So I went with one of my kitchen idols Delia….and then went ahead and changed it to suit the ingredients I’d bought! As per a Nigel Slated recipe, I added cardamom which was a really nice touch of soft fragrant spice that seemed to pair very well with the sultanas, cranberry and apricot. This loaf is a little lighter than the shop bought alternative, which is a good thing in my opinion, and is further enhanced by a light toasted before serving.

If you’ve never had stollen before I hope you give it a try and an alternative baked treat this Christmas! (more…)

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10 December 2013

12 Days of Christmas – Homemade Vanilla Extract

By Kirsty @ Ever So Sweet| Seasonal

So Christmas is here in a big way. I’ve spent the weekend doing some of my favourite thing about the festive period – spending time with friends, decorating trees, visiting a Christmas fair, making presents and, of course, baking. I spent this weekend with a couple of friends and we had a wonderfully festive time buying and decorating a tree. Despite my controlling ways threatening to dampen spirits (sometimes I just can’t help myself) we were all pleased with the end result.

Over the next few weeks I have a collection of twelve seasonal recipes and gift ideas for you to try out, hence the ever so clever title of this series ’12 Days of Christmas’. These are mostly homemade foodie gifts but I’m also going to attempt my own cards this year.

First up is DIY Vanilla Extract, a very simple but practical gift for any of your baker friends. The most difficult part for me was purchasing the alcohol as a non-drinker – there is A LOT of choice out there when you don’t really know what you’re looking for!

I got these cute little bottles and the vanilla pods on Amazon. The alcohol is up to you, vodka, rum or bourbon would all work here, I chose dark rum because I wasn’t really sure what Bourbon was and the rum, which I know my family enjoy, was on offer! (more…)

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4 December 2013

A Festive Moment

By Kirsty @ Ever So Sweet| Mid-Week Moment

1/2/3/4

1/ Dark Muscovado & Whiskey Marmalade // I think this would go down very well as one of the homemade gifts for my family!

2/ DIY Vanilla Extract // Another gift idea, I’m quite excited about making vanilla extract as it’s probably my favourite baking ingredient.

3/ Homemade Cards // Inspiration for my Christmas cards, although I will be using more festive quotes (even though there is always a place for Mean Girls references)

4/ Present Wrapping // Wrapping presents is one of the most fun elements of gift giving, this year I’m going with a white and gold theme which is a change for me because I almost always end up going with a Nordic-y red and white look.

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