Perfect Christmas Morning Breakfast - Countdown for Christmas Part 3

Happy Last Sunday of Advent Everyone!

This is Part 3, so the very last part of our little Christmas countdown. Today I'm going to be showing you something which is the perfect breakfast if you want to impress your family on Christmas morning. Or any morning, really.

THE PAIN AU CHOCOLAT!

I know, the pastry is not the easiest pastry to do. But please give it a try!

There are two options:
1, Prepare the pastry the night before, wake up an hour earlier in the morning, roll it out, make the little pain au chocolats, and bake them.
2, Prepare everything the previous night and in the morning just bake the pain au chocolats.
Either works.

Ingredients:
35 dkg flour
25 dkg very cold butter
half a sachet of instant dried yeast (use the other half for snow crescents)
2 dl cold milk
2 tblsp caster sugar
1 tblsp honey
1 tsp salt
approxiomately 150 g grated dark chocolate

Grate your very cold butter using a cheese grater. Add 6 dkg flour and mix it together with your hand. Line clingfilm on the counter, and spoon the mixture on it. Create a 2 cm thick, 12 cm long and 6 cm wide (approxiomately) rectangle, Wrap it into cling film and put in the fridge for half an hour or in the freezer for 15 minutes. 

Mix the yeast with the flour and add the remaining ingredients. Knead into a smooth dough.

On a floured surface, roll it into a rectangle, and place the butter rectangle on it lenghtwise. There should be a bit longer dough than the size of the butter rectangle on each side. Fold the downer and upper sides onto the butter rectangle. Fold one side of the dough on the butter rectangle (it should outreach it with a couple of centimeters). Push the outreaching part properly into the dough, then fold the other side as well - you should have covered the butter rectangle completely.

Turn the dough with 90 degrees, and roll it carefully. Divide the dough into three parts with your eyes and fold the two outer parts onto the middle one. That's a simple fold.

Then turn the dough again with 90 degrees, and roll it. Now divide it into four parts with your eyes. Fold the outer ones in, then fold the two parts on each other. That's a double fold. 

Turn the dough with 90 degrees, and do another simple fold. Don't roll it out but cover with a kitchen towel and put it in the fridge for 2-3 hours or for overnight. 

Roll the dough into 0,5 cm thickness and cut into 10x10 cm squares. Springle grated dark chocolate in the middle and roll it up. Cover the little pains with a kitchen towel and let it rest at a warm place for 30 minutes or for overnight. 

Preheat the oven for 175 degrees, and bake the pain au chocolats for 15 minutes.

Snow Crescents - Countdown for Christmas Part 2

sn't snow crescents - in Hungarian 'hókifli' - the cutest name for a cookie? Although this is not necessarily a Christmas cookie, at least in my family it's always present at any celebrations, I find it the best dessert for the holidays.

As you may guessed earlier, I am pretty much a big fan of smaller cookies for Christmas - I think baking huge cakes is unnecessary (although I will of course...). Let me explain. What does a Christmas fridge and balcony looks like? Full of food or ingredients, all needs to be chilled/rested, and after the holidays it's the same amount of leftovers. No matter how big your fridge is, it is very likely that there won't be space for a cake stand with the lovely cake on top, covered in icing, therefore it can't touch anything... Bad idea. Instead, a simple metal box full of cookies what you just put on the table with the coffee, and then you serve the leftovers at breakfast on Christmas morning. Because cake for breakfast is a bit 'too much', cookies are absolutely fine. 

And these snow crescents suggest that it wasn't only a 'form random balls from the dough'-method. Because it takes a long time. But it's worth it, believe me.

Don't be afraid, this recipe is not hard. But it takes a long time. It's the best to have a calm weekend afternoon before Christmas to prepare them. And good news! Storing them in a box, they stay fresh for more than a week. 

Ingredients

For the dough
50 dkg flour
25 dkg softened salted butter (if you use unsalted, add 1/2 tsp salt to the flour)
2 eggs
5 dkg sugar
2 dl semi-warm milk
half a sachet of instant dried yeast

For the walnut filling
230 dkg walnuts or pecans (I used half and half)
180 dkg icing sugar
2 tblsp milk
1/2 tblsp vanilla extract

For the jam filling
25 dkg thick jam (I prefer berry jam)

For the icing
5 dkg icing sugar

Method

For the dough, mix the yeast and the sugar with the milk in a cup.

In a large ball, whisk the eggs for two minutes with a hand mixer, then add the butter and mix it together. Incorporate the flour into the mixture, then add the milk, yeast and sugar. Roughly mix with a wooden spoon, then start kneading with your hand. Knead for 3-4 minutes. The dough should be smooth. Cover it with a kitchen towel and let it stand for 40 minutes. While it's resting, prepare the filling.

With the amount of ingredients I wrote above, you can use half of the dough for the walnut crescents and the other half for the jam crescents. If you want to prepare only one type, double the measurements. For me, the walnut crescents are the best/real ones!

You don't have to do anything with the jam in advance of filling.

Grate the walnuts in a food processor. I don't have one, so I put them in a plastic bag, and I hit them with a wooden spoon on the kitchen counter for 5 minutes. 

Mix the grated walnuts with the icing sugar, vanilla extract and milk in a saucepan, and cook it for 3 minutes on low heat. Cover it with a lid until the resting period of the dough is finished.

Preheat the oven for 175 degrees. Line parchment paper into two trays. 

Get a bit of the dough - a size of a walnut - and form it into a ball. On a floured surface, roll it into a 8-10 cm wide circle. Put half a tablespoon of filling in the middle. Fold the circle into a half circle, and push together the edges (it should look like a ravioli). Then fold it once again, so one side of the little roll will have a thicker crust (this should be the bottom of the cookie). So basically you just rolled the filling-bump into the flat part. Push the dough well together - use a fork if necessary. Push the ends into little 'tails' and turn them inside, so it will look like a little moon.

When you do it with jam, be very careful not to have any holes on the crescents, otherwise the jam will escape.

Bake them for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown. Roll them in the icing sugar while they are still hot. Serve with cold milk.

Our Secret Family Gingerbread Recipe - Countdown for Christmas Part 1

Hey Everyone! Good news: I'm going to make a series of three posts before Christmas: two cookies you can make days or weeks before the holidays (this is the first) and the perfect Christmas morning breakfast. Here we go with number one - Our Secret Family Gingerbread Recipe!

Not a secret anymore I guess.

This recipe has a cute story - our kitchen at home (and mine here in Scotland as well) is tidy and clean - but not organised at all. I mean the recipes - despite that I bind books myself and we have so many pretty recipe books and planners, the most important recipes are just circling around - 'it's on a piece of paper in the big red cookbook'; 'I've seen it in the wooden spoon drawer' ; 'I saved it in a draft on one of the computers' and so on. However, we never had problems with that - except maybe an additional half an hour looking for the recipes. But a couple of years ago, we lost the gingerbread recipe. It was gone.

It was literaly nowhere, so we decided to go back to the bottom. Where was it from? A back of a gingerbread spice mixture. Ten years ago. Great.

We tried every gingerbread recipe from every single brand of gingerbread spice mixtures - but ended up disappointed all the time. We had an entire Christmas period with a kitchen full of hope and half-decent cookies.

And then my mom found it. 

It was indeed on the back of a spice mixture, and it was the same. The same old, lovely perfection. 

Obviously we copied it to every single book and electronic device we have. And now I share it with you guys - so if it gets lost again, you can save me.

This recipe is the best gingerbread for me, ever ever. The only thing I changed from the original one is that back home we don't use separate spices, just buy the readymade gingerbread spice mixture. For some reason, I could not find any of that in Glasgow, so I made my own. 

The baking part of the gingerbread takes time because of the amount of cookies - I find it the best to do it together with someone - one is handling the oven and the other is cutting the cookies. For example, it is a brilliant kitchen activity for kids. When I was little I spent most of my december evenings cutting little angels and Christmas trees.

Ingredients
25 dkg honey
10 dkg butter
10 dkg sugar
0,5 kg flour
0.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
0.5 tbsp ground nutmeg
0.5 tbsp ground cloves
0.5 tbsp ground cinnamon
0.5 tbsp ground ginger
1 egg
2 egg yolks

Method

Melt the butter in a saucepan with the sugar and honey. Set aside and let it cool (I normally put it outside for some minutes). Mix the flour with the bicarbonate of soda and the spices. Whisk the egg and the egg yolks for a minute and add it to the flour. Mix it together, then add the sugar, butter and honey. Knead together with your hand until the dough is smooth. If it is still a bit warm, let it cool completely then put it in the fridge for overnight (this part is crucial - otherwise it won't be soft). 

Flour a bigger surface and roll 1/4 of the dough each time. Roll it to any shape, it should be around 4-5 mm thin. Cut the cookies out with gingerbread cutters - if you don't have these, you can use a cup as well. 

Put them in a tray (you can put baking paper but it won't stick without it either) and bake on 180 degrees for 5-7 minutes. Keep checking on them - the best is when the edges are crunchy and the middle is still soft. Let it stand for 5 minutes before putting them into a box. 

In a box, they could be kept forever.

Okay, not forever, but for a long time - so you can make it in advance for Christmas.

From this amount of dough, a normal metal cookie box will be full. 

For the icing, you may use the egg whites remained from using the egg yolks in the gingerbread - or if you freak out from eating raw eggs, you may use water. Start adding icing sugar, constantly mixing. It will be ready if it's thick but still spreadable - like the consistency of nutella or mustard (great examples huh). Put it in a small plastic bag and make a tiny hole on it - and you can start icing. 

If you want to make colourful icing, you can add food colouring at any point.

We also made a gingerbread house. We made our own templates and of course that I forgot to write down the measurements (food blogger...?). However, we used the gingerbread house of Kara as an inspiration, and I realised she actually put some templates on her blog. You can find it in the link with her instructions.

From my recipe, there was only a little bit of dough left after the house - so if you want to make it, my advice is to double the measurements - but it this cake, have plenty of time for it!