Tag: biscuit

Santa madeleines, a fun Christmas treat to prepare with children and adults

Those are Santa madeleines. This is a fun Christmas treat to prepare with children and adults.  My older daughter – who is 11 years old – ha that idea for her classmates. The teacher had placed a Christmas sock at the back of each student’s chair. I think those Santas did not stay long in the socks!

It is fun to make those Santa madeleines, not just for the children, I found that pretty cool too!

Before you start, it may be a good idea to wear aprons.

The concept of the Santa madeleine

Make a bunch of madeleines. You will need the special madeleine prints for this. The recipe I use is HERE. If you aren’t a fan of the lemon taste, don’t put any, you can put a dash of good quality vanilla extract.

You will need food colouring of a rich red colour from your supermarket.

Once the madeleines have cooled down, you can start the icing and complete your Santa madeleines! Note that the icing will need a few hours to dry fully, overnight is better.

You will need to make a white icing, a red icing and have found some little eyes bits (from the shops) for the eyes. If you want to add a pompon-like item, you can find little sugar stars for example. you will find those in the baking section of the shops.

Making and applying the icing

To prepare the icing, you need:
  • one lemon or two squeezed lemons
  • 2-3 cups of icing sugar sifted (to avoid any lumps)
  • the red food colouring

For the white icing, place a cup of the sifted icing sugar in a bowl, add about 1/2 lemon juice. Just add a little at the time and start mixing. You basically want something quite pasty, a bit like Nutella when at room temperature (or maybe a tiny bit more fluid). If you went too far, i.e. your icing is too liquid, add more sugar!

For the red, start with the red food colouring and then add the lemon juice. Aim for the same consistency a the white. Be mindful to not mix the utensils you are using.

To apply the icing on your Santa madeleines

When there are kids involved, I am all for simple tools. We used toothpicks to draw the hat border and small spoons for the beard and hat.

To attach the eyes on your Santa madeleine, put a little white icing underneath each eye and “glue” them to the madeleine.

To clean your kitchen bench

The red icing is messy (the white as well but it cleans without a trace).  Use baking soda and a bit of water to form a paste and rub your kitchen bench. it should come off very well!

It ended up with chocolate

It ended up with chocolate

I can’t remember how it all started.  I think I was browsing through some cookbooks .  As it happens (a lot) I got interrupted after a few minutes and left the books on the coffee table.  Fast forward a few hours, I can’t remember, my 8 y.o ., like a curious little possum, goes through the books and starts selecting pages. I am not even aware of that at the time.  In the end, we got these chocolate crackle tops for lunch boxes and a beautiful chocolate cake for dessert. Yes, you guessed right, those cookbooks I was browsing were all chocolates books, this is how it ended up with chocolate!

Chocolate crackle tops

These chocolate crackle tops are quite interesting.  By the way, the recipe is HERE.   It is best not to use a strong chocolate (50% or so is fine) and to add, as per the recipe, a good cocoa. And yes, please make me a favour, use a good cocoa and even preferably a dutch cocoa! But if like me you only have 70% cocoa chocolate handy and couverture chocolate on top of that (that was for the first batch- we did two batches over the week), you need to adapt a little the recipe.  I would recommend sticking to compound chocolate (i.e. your supermarket cooking chocolate) for this one.

chocolatebiscuits

We had a good time doing those, I think Ambrine has now mastered the centrifugal icing sugar coating force! Instead of pushing the ball in the icing sugar, we used a light plastic bowl with a handle which she could spin rapidly. It is a lot of fun to have several balls racing on the edges of the bowl (and not flying everywhere!).

Coating in icing sugar , ready, steady, roll!

And the chocolate cake?

mmmmm.  I need to do it again! Just for the photo, of course! It is a recipe from Valli Little called the Yin Yang Chocolate cake. Coming soon…

Palets bretons

The Palets Bretons are a specialty from Brittany in Western France.  I discovered how simple they are to make.  The only constraint is having a  mould (silicone or not) with little cavities between 3 to 5 cm wide.  You can have the children helping to cut out the biscuits and place them in the mould.

palet bretonIngredients:

Makes the quantity you can see on the above photo.

  • 140 g caster sugar
  • 3 egg yolks
  • 150 g soft butter (either use unsalted butter and add 4 g of salt) or use salted butter
  • 200 g plain white flour
  • 15 g baking powder
Method:

In a first time, you need to make the dough:

  1. Mix egg yolks and sugar until white and creamy (use a whisk)
  2. Add the soft butter and combine (swap the whisk for a wooden spoon or similar)
  3. Add the flour and baking powder
  4. Bring the mixture into a ball. Wrap in cell film and place in the fridge for a few hours or even better overnight.

The second part is the cutting and cooking:

  1. Preheat the oven to 170 °C.
  2. If you are using metal muffin trays or pastry rings, grease them with butter and place the pastry rings on a sheet of baking paper on the cooking tray.  If you are using a silicone mould, no need to grease.
moule improvise palets bretons
My improvised cutter and moulds for the Palets Bretons
  1. Lightly dust with flour your kitchen bench and roll the dough to 5 mm thick.
  2. Cut out round shapes for your palets bretons using either one of the pastry ring or if using a muffin tray or similar something in your kitchen of same diameter as your moulds (for example: a small glass, an egg cup, a towel ring).
  3. Place in the cooking moulds.
  4. Cook for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Turn over or slide on a cooling rack.

You can keep your palets Bretons in a cookie box for a couple weeks.  Use them to go with desserts such as apple compote or apple puree, a yogurt mix or even chocolate mousse.  Have them with a cup of tea.  Palets Bretons are also great for lunch box snacks.

Pallets bretons et mousse au chocolat