These Double Christmas Treats are made of two layers and taste absolutely divine, ad are surprisingly moist, too.
Looking through Pinterest a few weeks ago, I came across an image which I really liked the look of. It had two layers but looked like a cupcake/muffin – something a bit different, I thought, plus two parts meant I could get my two littlies involved a different stages…
Unfortunately, the image was not linked to a recipe but a sales page for the most over-priced cake mix I’ve ever come across.
So I created my own version, adding Christmassy touches and I am very pleased with the results of this one!
Double Christmas treats
These do take a bit of time, especially if you have little helpers, but are SO worth it!
It would make a lovely Christmas Eve activity with the kids – there’s plenty to sample and still have a nice snack to leave out for Santa 🙂
My three year old calls herself a ‘good egger’ and enjoyed making these treats…
First layer in some muffin cases, ready for cooking
Cover the lower layer with the biscuit mix – this photo shows the top layer on the back row and lower layer only in the front row.
Double Christmas treats fresh out of the oven – a light brown top is what you are after.
Double Christmas treats
Ingredients
- 180 g white chocolate, chopped plus about 100 g for decoration at the end
- 375g unsalted butter
- 420g smart sugar (or castor sugar as an alternative)
- 100g raw sugar
- 4 eggs
- 100g macadamia nuts, finely chopped
- 415g plain flour
- 1.5 teaspoons orange zest
- 2 tablespoons orange juice
- 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
- 150g dried cranberries
- 1/4 cup mixed dried fruit
- food colouring (optional)
Instructions
- Melt white chocolate and 150g butter.
- Once it has cooled a little, mix in 220g (1 cup) smart sugar. Then add 3 eggs and mix well.
- Stir in chopped macadamias and 115g (3/4 cup) flour.
- Grease large muffin pans – prepare 24 large muffin holes.
- Half fill muffin holes with mixture and put aside.
- Preheat over to 185°C.
- Cream raw sugar, 225g butter and 200g (bit under 1 cup) smart sugar.
- Beat in 1 egg.
- Mix in orange zest and juice.
- Mix in 300g (2.5 generous cups) flour and bicarb soda.
- Gently stir in cranberries and dried fruit until mixed throughout the dough.
- Add a spoonful of mixture on top of the brownie mix in the muffin tins. You may need to use fingers to spread the biscuit dough evenly.
- Place muffin trays into oven for 16 -17 minutes – the biscuit top should be lightly brown all over.
- Leave the trays to cool completely before removing from the muffin trays.
- Melt remaining white chocolate, add food colouring if you wish, and drizzle over the cooled Double Christmas Treats.
- Once the chocolate has set, they’re ready to serve…
Notes
- Â If you undercook them, the bottom layer will be very sticky. Simply turn the treats upside down and serve with ice-cream as a pudding!
- You can use a skewer to check the treats are cooked – you are looking for crumbs from the lower layer. But be careful crumbs from the top layer don’t mislead – thus watching the time is better judge.
- Finely chopped macadamias gives a lovely chewy, moist texture. A few bigger pieces are ok but it is worth getting them chopped well.
It took a while to chop the macadamias this fine, but it gives a better result.
- To add some green to match the red cranberries, you could swap the mixed dried fruit with pistachios
- You could cook this as small slabs and cut into pieces. But given the layers, cooking it as one big slab would probably result in the bottom being undercooked or the top burning.
- I used silicone muffin tray and some individual muffin cases – both worked equally well.
- I had a little left over biscuit mix so made a few biscuits as well – they take a bit less time to cook though.
My Father was offered one of these and took half one grudgingly “Alright, I’ll give it go”.
Mr Sweet Tooth expected a dry cupcake but was pleasantly surprised by the moist brownie base and came back for more (ignoring the desserts he’d normally prefer!) I took that as a successful recipe achieved!
My daughter made these as an alternative Christmas dessert for our family Christmas celebration. I wasn’t sure about muffins/cupcakes as a dessert but OMG these were divine!
She served them warm with a scoop of ice-cream (a 3 chocolate mix flavour) and they were absolutely fantastic. I will be trying this recipe, too, and have bookmarked it. Thank you from all our taste buds!
Hi KM, I’m so glad you enjoyed these double Christmas treats – I thought they were pretty special too! Served warm with ice-cream sounds like a nice touch, too.
Hope they work out as well for you as for your daughter – and thanks for visiting Love Santa, too 🙂
Looking at these I’m getting so excited now for Christmas 2014! I love the baking part of Christmas more than any other part, and I bake just about every cookie, cake, pudding and dessert I can find. Luckily, I have plenty of family and friends around to eat all of it, or I would struggle on my own.
I’ll be putting these on my list of bakes for this year – thanks for another great idea.
Hmm, sounds very yummy to be your friend, ilovechristmas 🙂 I hope you find these treats as delicious as my family did.
These look so yummy, don’t know if I can wait for Christmas to get here to try them. I may just have to make a batch before then. I have a huge sweet tooth. They look pretty simple and tasty.
I remember when my kids were little, it was so much fun to decide what we were going to leave out for Santa’s visit. Of course I always recommeneded chocolate chip cookies:)
Have you given in and tried these yet, Karmaskeeper? 🙂
My daughter loved this , it was so great to make her happy,
That’s made my day – helping you make someone else happy 🙂
This site is so full of delicious recipes for Christmas I don’t need to go anywhere else. I will have several new ideas for this Christmas celebration which is going to be bigger and better than before.
We’re glad you like the recipes and this site, Oracelmay, and would love to hear how wonderful your Christmas celebrations are, too.
I’ll have to try this over the holidays! Though the recipe might be a little confusing to the younger ones at first. However, I’m sure it’s a good learning experience. Though I’m sure I’ll have to take out the nuts since some of my family are allergic to nuts.
Nut allergies are important but I’m not sure these will work so well without the macadaemias.
If you show it to younger kids as two recipes (ie make some cakes then some biscuits to go on top), it will be less confusing.
Hmm, I think you’re right. I’ll go with the two recipes idea and see if I can roll with that. They’re smart kids so I’m sure they’ll keep up easily like that. Thank you for the wonderful advice!
You’re most welcome sorrowscal 🙂
I am impressed with the amount of recipes you have here and this one looks really good. Above all I think it’s important to have time for the simple and good things.