Gingerbread and orange chocolate

This homemade chocolate is full of flavours of Christmas: chocolate, gingerbread and orange. I baked too many gingerbread cookies that I don't have time to eat, so I wanted to use part of them elsewhere, and this was just the perfect way.

These chunky chocolate pieces could make a nice homemade present. Here are the simple instructions how to make them.

You'll need these:

300 g dark baking chocolate

Zest of 1 orange

4-5 gingerbread cookies

This is what you do:

Gently melt the chocolate in a pot in a water bath until it has fully melted.

Grate the zest of the orange.

Crush the gingerbread cookies into various sized chunks.

Mix some of the orange zest and gingerbread cookie chunks into the melted chocolate.

Spread the chocolate on baking paper and sprinkle the rest of the gingerbread cookie pieces and orange zest on the top.

Let rest in the fridge for a few hours.

Then break it into smaller pieces and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Gingerbread cookies

Of course also this year I had to make a small batch of gingerbread cookies. Once again I used the ready made dough from Ikea, which is very nice and makes things easy. I used my new hedgehog cutter for the most of them and fully kept to the hedgehog theme this time. I decorated them with a mix of icing sugar, cocoa powder and lemon juice. They filled the flat with a lovely flavour.

Gingerbread woodland animals diorama

Gingerbread cookies always belong to Christmas, but this year I wanted to make something different. Instead of plain cookies or a gingerbread house, I made a small woodland animal diorama. In my plans it was much more spectacular than how it actually turned out, but never mind, I was happy with it. Maybe next year I can spend more time with such a project, as it was great fun! It reminded me a little bit of the huge horse head gingerbread cookies that I used to bake for my horse and pony friends at Christmas – those were the days! Have you made any creative work with gingerbread?

So, this is a photo post of my creation. The woodland animals are mainly hedgehogs of course, but if you look very closely, you might spot one or the other different species as well.

Gingerbread cookies

Baking gingerbread cookies before Christmas belongs to the important yearly Christmas traditions for me. It can be nice family fun to bake and decorate the cookies, hogs and hoglets alike can participate. This time I took the easy way out with the ready made Ikea gingerbread cookie dough, so the baking went quite smoothly, but still resulted in lovely looking woodland animals collection. I like to make the cookies very thin so that they are crispy after the baking and then get a light decoration. Decoration isn't necessarily needed, the cookies are tasty even without.

Ingredients

550g gingerbread cookie dough

Flour

For decorating (optional):

Icing sugar

Lemon juice

Food colouring

Tyrkisk Peber extract and crush

Different cookie decorations

Take small pieces of the dough and roll them out thinly on a floured even surface. Cut out any shapes you like with cookie cutters. For me the hedgehog shape was obviously the natural choice, but I also made other animal shapes and even Finland shaped cookies.

Bake the cookies on baking paper at 175C for about 6 minutes until crispy. Keep an eye on them while they are in the oven as the thin ones can bake quite quickly and start blackening around the edges.

Let the cookies cool fully before decorating. Make the coloured icing in the meanwhile. Of course ready made coloured icing can be purchased, but it's nice to fiddle around making your own. I normally just add lemon juice to icing sugar and whisk it to a smooth icing, which needs to be fairly thick as you don't want it to escape the cookies. Add food colouring carefully as it might make the mix too liquid and then you would need to add icing sugar again. I also made one special icing of salty liquorice type of flavour with Tyrkisk Peber extract.

I always make my own piping bag either out of a freezing bag or baking paper rolled into a funnel. I think that life might be easier with a proper piping bag or ready made icing from the tube, but I'm used to it this way. Squirt all sorts of shapes and figures on the cookies, you can even write on them if you like.

Then also sprinkle any sprinkles you like on the icing when it's still soft, so these will stick to it. Then let the icing get hard in peace and later place the cookies into a Christmas tin or share them with your friends.

 

Get creative and have fun!

Your VegHog