The Late Late Toy Show is tonight and I'm really excited. Hopefully I'll decide what I want for Christmas. My Mam made some treats for us tonight, but I wanted to make something myself.
Movie Night Popcorn
Ingredients
50g popcorn
handful of M&M's
50g milk/white chocolate
handful of smarties
Method
Put the popcorn and the sweets into a bowl.
Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water.
Pour the chocolate over the popcorn mix and stir.
Spoon the the mixture into a large container and
place in a fridge for a hour.
This cookies are from Rachel Allen's Food for Living. They are remarkably straightforward to make. They are crunchy on the outside and chewy in the middle . Cookies would absolutely be one of my favourite treats.
Rachel Allen's Polka Dot Cookies
Ingredients
225g (8 oz) Butter
375g (15 oz) Soft Brown Sugar (or light muscovado sugar)
2 tsp Vanilla Extract
2 Eggs, beaten
350g (14 oz) Plain flour
½ tsp Salt
1 Level tsp Baking Powder
1 Level tsp Bicarbonate of Soda 150g (5 oz) Smarties / Chocolate Chips
Method
1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 ̊C / 350 ̊F / Gas Mark 4 /
2. Cream butter and sugar together. Add in the vanilla extract and eggs.
3. Mix the flour and salt into a bowl. Sift in the Bicarbonate of soda and Baking Powder and mix well.
4. Add the dry ingredients into the wet.
5. Add the smarties last.
6. Roll into little balls (walnut size if you want small ones or golf ball size if you want larger ones. I pressed in a smarty on the smaller ones so that there would definitely be a smarty on the top of each cookie.
7. Bake for 12 – 16 mins. If you want chewy cookies, bake until the edges are turning brown but the middle is still pale. If you want crunchy all the way through then bake until golden all over.
8. Cool on a wire rack.
This recipe is from Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Christmas. These chocolate biscuits taste a lot like chocolate shortbread and their so easy to make. The video below is of Nigella Lawson cooking the chocolate biscuits.
For the top of the cookies you can use Nigella's festive topping but I just used melted milk chocolate.
Nigella Lawson's Christmas Chocolate Biscuits
Ingredients
250g soft butter
150g caster sugar
40g cocoa powder
300g plain flour
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
For The Festive Topping
2 x 15ml tablespoons cocoa powder
175g icing sugar
60ml boiling water, from a kettle
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Christmas Sprinkles
Smarties (optional)
Method
1.Preheat the oven to 170̊C/ gas mark 3 and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
2.Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl and, when you have a light, soft whipped mixture, beat in the 1/3 cup cocoa powder (sifting if it is lumpy) and, when that's mixed in, beat in the flour with the baking soda and baking powder. Or just put everything in the processor and blitz, if you prefer.
3.This mixture is very soft and sticky and I find it easiest to form the cookies wearing my disposable vinyl gloves, so pinch off pieces about 1 tablespoon in size, roll them into balls, then slightly flatten into fat discs as you place them, well spaced, on your cookies sheet. You should get about 12 on at a time.
4.Bake each batch for 15 minutes; even though the cookies won't feel as if they've had enough time, they will continue to cook as they cool. They will look slightly cracked on top, and it's this cozy, homespun look I love.
5.Move the cookie sheet to a cold surface and let it sit for 15 minutes before transferring the cookies to a wire rack, with a sheet of newspaper under it (to catch drips while topping them).
6.To make the topping, put the cocoa powder, confectioners' sugar, water and vanilla extract into a small saucepan and whisk over a low heat until everything is smoothly combined. Take off the heat for 10 minutes.
7.When the cookies are cool, drizzle each one with a tablespoonful of chocolate glaze—it will help "glue" the sprinkles on in a minute. Use the back of the spoon to help spread the mixture, though an uneven dribbled look is part of their charm.
8.After you've iced 6 cookies, scatter with some of the Christmas sprinkles and continue until all the cookies are topped. If you ice them all before sprinkling, you will find the cocoa "glue" has dried and the sprinkles won't stick on.
50g popcorn
