TRForge Mushroom Cookies

Now you can make your own quirky mushroom cookies! Yay!

80 g soft butter
80 g sugar
20 g vanilla sugar
2 eggs
1 tbs. honey
150 g wheat flour
100 g sweet, powdered almonds
130 g starch
20 g baking soda
1 pinch salt
1 pinch of powdered aniseed, cardamom and cloves, respectively.

250 g sugar powder
1 egg white
food coloring

Stir the butter with the sugar, the vanilla sugar and the spices until it becomes a soft and bright cream. Add the honey and the eggs, respectively, and stir until the mass is homogeneous. Wrap the dough in a foil and let it cool in the frigde for one hour. Roll out the dough and cut out cookies with a drinking glas or a cookie cutter. Put the cookies on a baking sheet with baking paper and bake them until they get just a hint of brown on the edges. Let the cookies cool down a few hours or over night. Mix beaten egg white with the sugar powder. Seperate the sugar icing to ink it in different colors. Paint mushrooms (or whatever you prefer) onto the cookies. Let them dry.

You can use different spices to make seasonal mushroom cookies, e.g. by using orange or lemon aroma.

Wine gums

Wine gums are easy to make, and it is fun to try different tastes. You can use fruit teas or fruit juices (if you use exotic fruit's juices, boil them first!) of your choice. You can even create cristmas candy for grown-ups by using mulled wine or punch. Suitable moulds are usually quite expensive, but there is a cheap alternative: Just use the interior plastic part of a chocolate advent calendar. This way you will get nice christmas motives, too. Of course you can also use the interior part of normal chocolate boxes or moulds for ice-cubes. The amount of ingredients given here is suitable for filling about one chocolate advent calendar.

2 tbs. gelatin powder
8 tbs. fruit tea
2 tbs. sugar
1 tsp. honey
1 pinch of citric acid or a few drops of concentrated lemon juice
tasteless vegetable oil

Anoint the moulds. Brew a small cup of tea. Take two tbs. of the tea to dissolve the sugar and the citric acid.
Moisten the gelatine with 6 tbs. tea and let it steep for 10 minutes. Melt the gelatine, but don't boil it! Add the sugar solution and the honey. Stir carefully, otherwise you will get too much foam. You can skim the foam, but it doesn't bother me, personally. Pour the mass into the moulds and let it set for a few hours. If you want to store your gums, powder them with starch to prevent them from becoming sticky.

Advent torte with cherries

250 g speculaas ("Dutch Windmill Cookies")
100 g butter
8 sheets of leaf gelatine
500 g mascarpone
500 g curd
4 tbs. honey
1 tbs. powdered cinnamon
200 g sugar
250 ml whipping cream
350 g pitted sour cherries
cocoapowder

Put the speculaas into a bag and crush them. Drizzle the crumbs with the melted butter. Mix the result and put it into a cake setting ring. Flatten it with a wet spoon.
Stir curd, mascarpone, cinnamon, honey and sugar. Prepare and add the gelatine according to the instructions on the packet. Whip the cream and mix with the curd-mascarpone mass. Put the cherrys onto the flan case. Add the cream and flatten it. Let it cool in the fridge for a couple of hours. Before serving remove the ring and powder the torte with cocoa.

Just replace the speculaas with ladyfingers and leave out the cinnamon, and you can eat this torte all year.