During this year of virtual everything, ABC Classic Radio commissioned Yorta Yorta woman, Deborah Cheetam AO, to write a new Christmas carol to be recorded by a virtual choir. The wonderful result is Christmas with You, which 1,500 people from around the world sang as a virtual choir. You can find the video here. I was very proud to be part of this project as a soprano (not my usual singing part but this one was within my range and I liked that part the best).
On the topic of Christmas, another addition to my Christmas boxes this year was gingerbread, made from the recipe in the November 2020 issue of the Australian Women's Weekly. I didn't have dark brown sugar so my gingerbread don't have the same burnished hue as theirs, but they tasted great.
I decorated the gingerbread with rolled fondant that was stencilled with some beautiful Australian Christmas themed stencils by Berry Sweet from Miss Biscuit, that I airbrushed on. I figured that having invested in an airbrush earlier in the year, I was going to make the most of it! I also sprinkled the biscuits with some edible gold glitter.
If you would like to try the gingerbread recipe, you will need:
350g plain flour
100g brown sugar
100g dark muscavado sugar
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
115g cold butter, chopped
87g (1/4 cup) golden syrup
1 egg
In a food processor, place the flour, sugars, baking powder and spices and pulse to combine.
Add the butter, and pulse to combine. Add the golden syrup and 1 egg, and process together until the mixture the dough just comes together.
Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and knead until the dough is smooth and the same colour throughout. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and refrigerate for an hour.
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Remove the dough from the fridge and roll it to a 6mm thickness on a floured bench or between two pieces of baking paper. Cut out desired shapes and place onto a baking tray lined with baking paper. Re-roll the scraps and keep cutting out shapes until all the dough has been used.
Bake the biscuits in the preheated oven for 12 minutes or until the biscuits are firm to the touch, rotating the trays front to back and top to bottom if you bake more than one tray at once. Remove the trays from the oven and allow the gingerbread to cool completely on the trays.
Decorate as desired. I rolled out fondant and cut out shapes the same size as the biscuits, and using a paintbrush dipped in water, lightly moistened the top of each biscuit and pressed the fondant shape gently on top. After the fondant had dried, I stencilled the biscuits using an airbrush and red and green airbrush colours, then before the colour dried, lightly sprinkled edible glitter on the top of each biscuit for that festive shine.
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