These Primrose Bakery ginger sparkle cookies are so delicious and are really sparkly! Although I’m sharing this in December, they would make a wonderful treat all year round for a special occasion. Easy to make, they are a perfect bake to make with children too! They are a great festive treat to enjoy as you wrap up your presents – something that I shall be doing a bit last-minute this year!

This recipe is taken from Primrose Bakery Christmas, which makes a brilliant gift (affiliate link).

Ingredients (makes 15-20 cookies)

280g plain flour

2 1/2 tsp ground ginger

3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp cloves

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/4 tsp salt

180g unsalted butter, at room temperature

225g golden caster sugar

60g molasses sugar or dark brown sugar

1 large egg

1 tbsp water

80g coarse or granulated sugar

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C (fan) / gas mark 4. Lightly grease a couple of baking trays and line with parchment paper.

2. Sift the flours, spices, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a bowl and set aside.

3. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add the egg and beat until well combined.

4. On a low speed, add all the sifted dry ingredients and mix until the dough just comes together. Add the water and mix to combine. Wrap the dough in cling film and form into a long sausage shape, before leaving to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

5. Put the course or granulated sugar into a bowl. Cute the dough into 15-20 evenly sized pieces the roll each one into a ball. Roll each dough ball in the bowl of sugar, then place them evenly spaced out on the trays (allow at least 3cm to allow the cookies to spread when baking).

6. Bake for 15-18 minute, until the edges of the cookies are slightly firm and the centre is still a little soft. Let them cool on the trays for about 5 minutes before removing.

7. These cookies are delicious warm, so enjoy once they have cooled a little more. Keep the rest in an air tight tin. Enjoy!

Are you ready for Christmas?!

I certainly don’t feel like I am! I’m hoping to make another batch of Primrose Bakery ginger sparkle cookies if I have the time… If you need another last-minute idea, how about these wonderful biscuits?

If you’re in the North East of England and you need a last-minute gift idea, how about booking a place on the Craftitude workshop? Hosted by me and the wonderful Sarah from Simple Happy Life on 1st February 2020 at The Biscuit Factory in Newcastle upon Tyne. Click here for tickets and more details – we’d love to see you there!

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Hello friends! Sorry for being a bit quiet here lately – the weeks are just going by so fast! Not long until I go back to the day job so I’m enjoying every moment with Little One. Have you made any Christmassy plans? I’ve been working on a few handmade bits that I can’t share with you yet…and also doing a bit of baking. I love trying out new recipes for Christmas each year, and this one is so good. These Christmas brownies are the perfect treat – the fruit, nuts, hint of spice and brandy all work so well with the chocolate. They really are a taste of Christmas! Even Tom enjoyed them and he’s not usually a fan of fruit and nuts, so that’s saying something!

This recipe is originally from the BBC Food website.

Ingredients

30ml/1fl oz/2 tbsp brandy

100g/3½oz dried cranberries

300g/10½oz dark chocolate, broken into chunks

200g/7oz butter

4 free-range eggs

300g/10½oz light muscovado sugar

200g/7oz plain flour

1 tsp mixed spice

100g/3½oz pecans, roughly chopped icing sugar, to serve

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4 and line a 30x20cm/12x8in tin with baking parchment.

2. Gently heat the brandy then add the cranberries and leave to soak while you prepare the brownie mix.

3. Melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, or in the microwave. Stir gently until smooth then set aside to cool slightly.

4. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar until pale and fluffy.

5. Whisk the chocolate and butter mix into the eggs then gently fold in the flour, mixed spice, pecans, cranberries and brandy until fully incorporated.

6. Pour into the prepared tin, smooth the surface then bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until the brownie is firm to the touch.

7. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then place on a wire rack until cooled completely. Once cool, cut into squares and dust the tops with icing sugar.

Enjoy!

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There are some times when it’s a bit to early to use the ‘C’ word, but when it comes to making a Christmas cake it’s good to be organised! Last year, my Mum gave me the recipe card for our family Christmas cake. It was from Family Circle back in the day and has the amounts for various sizes of square and circular tins, so it’s pretty handy. I was so excited to make it! I was pregnant at the time and having a break from my blog, which is why the recipe has only just made it here this year. Now it’s that time again when I’m starting to think about making one for this Christmas. I fed this cake with brandy 2-3 times before adding the marzipan and icing, which I made without egg whites last year. We love this recipe and I hope you will too!

Ingredients (for a 15cm /6″ round cake tin)

225g (8oz) sultanas

225g (8oz) currants

225g (8oz) raisins

50g (2oz) Glace cherries, chopped

50g (2oz) candied peel, chopped

50g (2oz) chopped almonds (chop up some blanched almonds if you can’t find them ready-chopped)

225g (8oz) plain flour

1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

150g (6oz) butter

150g (6oz) soft dark brown sugar

3 large eggs

To prepare the tin

Cut a double thickness strip of greaseproof paper to fit around the sides of the tin, and stand 5cm (2″) higher than the rim. Make a 2.5cm (1″) fold along the lower edge, and then snip from the edge to the fold along the lower edge at 1cm (1/2″) intervals all the way along. Grease the tin and then insert the strip around the sides, pressing the snipped pieces flat onto the bottom of the tin. Press paper agains the sides. Cut a double thickness of greaseproof paper to fit the base of the tin and grease lightly.

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 140 (120 Fan)/Gas mark 1. Measure the dried fruit, cherries, peel and almonds and put them in a large bowl. Sift the flour and spices over the top and mix well.

2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy – you can use an electric mixer if you have one.

3. Beat the eggs together and add a little at a time to the creamed mixture, alternating with the fruit and flour mix. Beat well between each addition.

4. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin, spreading it carefully and firmly into the corners.

5. To protect the cake whilst baking, tie several thicknesses of newspaper around the outside of the cake tin with string. Stand a roasting tin of water at the bottom of the oven during cooking to keep your cake moist.

6. Bake for 3 hours, and remove from the oven when a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. It may take a little longer, depending on your oven.

7. Cool in the tin for an hour, before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Store it in an air tight tin in a cool, dark place.

Finishing your Christmas cake

I usually marzipan and ice our Christmas cake a couple of weeks before the big day. This leaves chance for me to feed it some brandy beforehand! Last year I fed it in 2-week intervals, with 1 tbsp of brandy each time. You can feed it as much or as little as you prefer – I don’t like it to be overwhelmed by the alcohol. Leave your cake in the tin for 2 weeks after baking before adding the marzipan and icing. You’ll need some warmed up apricot jam to stick the marzipan to your cake.

The standard way to ice a Christmas cake is to use Royal icing – click here for a recipe. I couldn’t use that last year because Royal icing contains egg whites, so I made a very thick water icing with a splash of lemon juice. If the icing doesn’t have snowy peaks, then it isn’t a traditional Christmas cake as far as I’m concerned!

I didn’t get any good photos of the finished cake last year, so this post will be updated in a few weeks so you can see the finished Christmas cake. You may want to try out some of my other festive recipes and crafty projects below too!

Post updated 24th November 2020.

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The work we had done in the house was to have some super ceiling-height shelves built in our living room. I’m all about the storage right now, and these are perfect for what we need! I’ve had a little desk built in as well which means that my computer could come downstairs, which is really handy. All of my craft supplies (except for the fabric stash) are downstairs as well, which is so much easier than having to go upstairs every time I have forgotten something else. A perfect solution to not having a craft room I think! We are still organising everything (we have a LOT of books/music/stuff) so I haven’t actually taken any finished photos yet, except for one of my rainbow-organised craft books that you can see above. It was a lot of fun sorting them like this!

I haven’t really done that much crafting recently, but I have made Christmas cakes this year using the recipe that my Mum used to make. Can’t wait to try it! I was a bit late with getting the recipe up in time for this year, but I’ll be taking photos to schedule it for 2016. I marzipanned and iced it last weekend, which involved a lot of checking that the marzipan was ok haha!

In other news, I was so excited to see that Pip Lincolne (author of the amazing book Craft for the Soul) has read my review of her book and left me the most gorgeous comment! It really made my day! For those of you wanting to buy the book, it will be released in the UK next year – or if you can’t wait then you can read my review and find out how I got mine…

And finally, I have left my biggest news until the end…I am pregnant! We are absolutely delighted and can’t wait for Baby to arrive in the spring! So, when I first decided to extend my blog holiday I had a lot of morning sickness (which is such a ridiculous name, as it isn’t just restricted to mornings!) and was super tired. With that and everything happening at home, not forgetting a sudden and unexpected move to a new team in my day job, my crafting an blogging just had to give way for a while. I totally underestimated how tiring it would be, and even now that I’m well into my second trimester I still find myself falling asleep early in the evenings (or during the afternoon on my days off!). But I’m pleased to say that everything is going really well and I’m just SO excited about starting our family.

In terms of blogging, my posts will probably be more infrequent, although I am very keen to keep up with my blogging whenever I can. I know that life is about to change completely and so we’ll just have to see what happens! Hats off to all those blogger mums who manage to keep things going – I’m not sure if I’ll have the energy or time for that! But thank you to you all for sticking with me I still intend to blog about the things I make and do so that hasn’t changed. We’ve already decided that we don’t want to share photos of our little one online, so this won’t be turning into a baby blog – there are plenty of other excellent blogs like that already so I’ll leave it to the pros. I’ll try and put together a few more posts before Christmas, so there will be more to see here than there has been of late…thanks for your patience, friends!

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