ALMOND COOKIES

Ingredients:

• 375 grams grounded almonds
• 22o grams white granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon almond essence
• 3 egg whites
• 80 grams almond flakes

Steps:

• preheat the oven to 190°C
• mix the almonds, sugar and essence in a large bowl
• lightly beat the egg whites, only a minute or two as you don't want stiff peaks
• mix it in with the mixture until it turns into a paste
• sprinkle over the almond flakes
• take some of the mixture and create balls, half moon shapes or whatever shape you want it to be.
• put it onto baking paper in a tray in the oven and bake for about 15 until they are golden brown

VANILLA CUPCAKE WITH CHOCOLATE & CHERRIES

I used the classic cake recipe (can be found on my blog), added a table spoon of vanilla essence, dark chocolate chips and cherries for these cupcakes. Due to the dark chocolate you didn't really taste the cherries, I only added a few spoon fulls so I would have to add more next time. I got about 24 cupcakes out of the batter.

CHRISTMAS CUPCAKE

I made these cupcakes for our office Christmas party. I made the box myself and used it as a name tag. The cupcake was flavoured with chocolate, the frosting was vanilla and the little chocolate decoration was dark chocolate. I used this recipe , added chocolates sprinkles and devided it into cupcakes. I made about 24 cupcakes with that batter. For the frosting I used this butter cream frosting recipe but I left out the lemon zest and added lots of vanilla essence.

For the decoration I just melted some dark chocolate, spread it out on baking paper, let it set in the fridge and pushed out the shape. You can't let the chocolate set too much as you will break it when you push down the shape. I leave it in the fridge for a few minutes and then I try, if it's too soft I put it back in and if I notice that it's too hard I leave it out of the fridge for a bit to soften. I know it seems like a lot of work but actually it's just melting, spreading and picking the right time to push out the shape.