At one of the Christmas function I went to, a friend of a friend turned up with some Danish Christmas treats. These were really yummy so I begged the recipe from her! Just don’t ask me to pronounce the name in Danish – she had to write it out for me!

Note it needs a special cast iron pan (like a frying pan but with circles in it like a patty cake tray) – I haven’t figured out what alternatives would work yet.

Æbleskiver

510 gram plain flour

1 Tablespoon of white sugar

0.5 teaspoon of salt

2 teaspoons of baking powder

4 eggs

2 cups of buttermilk

oil

icing sugar

Combine the dry ingredients then add the eggs and buttermilk.

Heat the pan then add a little oil into each circle. Put enough dough in each hole to  fill it about 3 quarters of the way to the top.

Once it starts to bubble around the edges, turn them over with a fork or something think like a knitting needle (apparently the traditional tool!).

Sprinkle with icing sugar and serve – if you can bear to give any away! They’re nice with jam, too.

** I was told you can put in slices of apple or apple sauce  or blobs of jam when turning them during cooking. So many variations to try! Once I find a pan anyway.

When she was very young, my daughter decided we were making “5 cent biscuits” for Santa. I have no idea where she got the name from or what it meant to her, but the name has stuck and we leave out 5 cent biscuits for Santa every year.

Everyone else (and us the rest of the year!) call them shortbread so I thought I’d share our recipe with you – it’s pretty simple and my kids have helped make them from an early age.

5 cent biscuits recipe

You need:

250g butter (or margarine)

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1/3 cup of castor sugar

2 cups plain flour

4 Tablespoons rice flour

You do:

Preheat oven to 180 Celsius

grease an oven tray

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla (that means beat them together until they are pale yellow and fluffy)

add flour and mix

knead the dough well on a lightly floured bench/board

shape shortbread*

Prick shortbread surface with a fork

bake at 160 Celsius (yep, lower than the preheat temp) for 15 – 20 minutes

remove from oven when starting to colour

cool

sprinkle with icing sugar, dip in chocolate or leave plain.

* you can roll out the dough and make 4 saucer-sized circles, cut into 8 pieces per circle OR you can let the kids use shaped cutters to make fun 5 cent biscuits. Individual biscuits cook a little faster than the circles.

Kulkuls are an Indian biscuit that is made in most (all?) regions of India for Christmas. They’re easy to make and the kids will have fun BUT make sure an adult does the frying and heating the syrup.

You need: 1 kilo of flour, 1 teaspoons of baking powder, 1 teaspoon ground cardamon, 2 Tablespoons ghee, 2 cups of coconut milk, 8 Tablespoons sugar (very fine so use caster sugar or grind some other sugar yourself) and 4 eggs.

Beat the eggs, then mix in with the baking powder and flour. Add in the sugar, cardamon and coconut milk.

Knead the dough then cover with a damp cloth for about 30 minutes.

Separate the dough into small portions and roll into balls (remember playing with play dough as a kid?) Flatten the balls with the back of a fork, leaving lines in it, then curl up the edges a bit before deep frying in small batches.

Drain on paper towel or newspaper.

Heat 2 cups of sugar to 6-8 Tablespoons of water until sugar is dissolved. Place kulkuls in the syrup to absorb the syrup, then put aside to let the sugar harden.

Store in airtight containers.

Note – ghee is a form of fat used a lot in Indian cooking. Instead of ghee, you can use shortening or a light margarine.

Every year, my Mum would do something special for those around us – school teachers, guide leaders, postman, etc – and one year she made individual Christmas cakes.

She bought Christmas cakes from the supermarket, those square fruit cakes, and cut them into quarters to make 4 cakes. She put each cake on a piece of strong cardboard covered in foil. We then iced them with Royal icing (the white icing on wedding cakes). On some of them we decorated the icing with icing tools to put patterns around the top.

She then got us to roll out the scraps of icing and cut out holly leaves with mini cutters. These we painted green with food colouring. We also made little balls to be holly berries and painted these red.

We decorated the tops of the cakes with the holly berries and leaves and Mum piped “Merry Christmas” on the top in white icing. We then painted the letters with gold.

To complete the gifts, we wrapped them in clear cellophane tied up with red and green curling ribbon.

They looked fantastic and were well received by everyone.

I saw those individual puddings a number of times – they look so impressive and taste yum too.

I didn’t have time to find a cake recipe and cook it up so I found a different way to make them

So, buy a lovely moist fruit cake.

Cut it into small pieces (like about 2cm by 2cm) – make them round if you have a circle cutter. If you have a little more time, roll the pieces between your fingers to make little balls of cake.

Mix some yoghurt with icing sugar. Dob some of this mix on top of each cake piece.

Chop up some glace cherries or ginger. Add a piece or three on top of each pudding.

Let it set then serve for Santa, unexpected guests or even wrap as Christmas gifts. And you can still call them home made

A Greek friend gave me this recipe – they’re very yummy

Kouramiedes.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C

Beat .5 cups of room temperature butter ( which is about 115 grams or 8 Tablespoons)

Add .5 cup icing sugar and cream them (that is, mix them until they are pale yellow and fluffy)

Add 1 egg yolk, .5 teaspoon of vanilla essence and 1 Tablespoon of brandy or an orange liquer.

Add .5 cup of finely chopped nuts (walnuts or almonds traditionally)

Add .5 teaspoon of baking powder to 2.5 cups of flour, then mix in with nut butter

Knead the dough then chill for a few hours – preferably overnight.

Make balls of dough and place on a biscuit tray (you don’t need to grease the tray) with a bit of space in between (4 to 5 cms)

Push a clove into each biscuit.

Bake for 15 or so minutes so the biscuits are light brown.

Roll in icing sugar while they are still wamr.

They last well if stored in air tight containers.

**The outside sugar makes them a little messy to eat but that’s half the fun – and Santa won’t notice through his beard

Like most other people, our family is pretty busy. I love the idea of my kids leaving something for Santa (I think it shows respect and hospitality – not to mention gratitude for all those presents he leaves!)

But with school finishing so close to Christmas and my work commitments, we have limited cooking time. So I buy some shortbread – just plain basic stuff form the supermarket – and we decorate it. I melt some chocolate (white and brown) and put out 100s & 1000s, coconut and crushed nuts, and let the kids decorate shortbread biscuits.

We do enough for Santa and for gifts from the kids to their grandparents – and for us to eat all the broken ones

It’s easy, fun, messy and a family tradition for us now. Maybe this year we’ll bake the shortbread first – nah, probably not!

This is the other form of Spanish almond nougat – the other one is hard but this one has egg yolks in it so is a bit softer.

Ingredients

300g icing sugar

300g ground almonds

6 egg yolks

grated rind of one lemon

grated cinnamon (or ground if you haven’t got any fresh cinnamon to use)

Directions

Fold the egg yolks with the almond.

Heat the icing sugar, cinnamon and lemon rind until you have a brown syrup.

Slowly stir in the almond and egg mixture.

Once it has thickened and isn’t sticking, press it into a baking tray. Some people like to add a weight on top, such as a wooden chopping board.

After two or three days, tip the nougat out of the  tray and cut into pieces.

Turron is a Spanish almond nougat that they make especially for CHristmas.

Ingredients

1kg honeyÂ

500g sugar

1.5kg almonds

rind of 1 lemon

2 egg whites

Directions:

Heat the almons in the overn

Slowly heat the honey in a suacepan until all its water is gone

 Add sugar and mix with the honey

Whisk the egg white until it forms peaks. Gently fold this into the sugar/honey mix.

Stir rapidly for 8 – 10 minutes (less if using an electric beater) then slowly over a low heat until it caramelises.

Add the leomn rind and hot almonds, and mix thoroughly.

Cook for 3 – 5 minutes, but be careful it doesn’t stick.

Line baking trays or moulds with rice paper.

Pour the mix onto the rice paper and leave to set for 2.5 hours. Cut into pieces.

Store in airtight containers once it has completely cooled. Yummy!

Leave some out for Santa and use some as Christmas gifts.

Santa is a very busy man on Christmas Eve – he has a lot of houses to visit and many presents to deliver. So it’s understandable he gets hungry & thirsty along the way!

Santa appeciates having a snack waiting for him when he visits – and it’s good manners to offer him something in return for all those gifts, too.

There are some recipes and ideas in our snacks article, but maybe you have a special snack you leave out for Santa every year. We’d love to hear about it, and even better, we’d love to have the recipe if you know it.

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Love Santa’s Elf