Santa's Sleigh & Christmas Cookies

I wish you a Merry Christmas! Have a great holydays!

Santa, sleigh and deers are made out of gingerbread. I found the best recipe ever and I'll stick to it in the future. I only couldn't find molasses here in Belgrade, so I used barley malt syrup (Maltex brand in Serbia). This was a two days work and apart from the recipe ingredients you'll need sunflower seeds (about 50 g) and some royal icing to glue them and paint the cookies. I used this great recipe from Minja's Kuhinjica.

Minja's Royal Icing

1 egg white
200 g powdered sugar
1 tsp corn starch
1 tsp fresh lemon juice

Beat egg white and mix with the rest of the ingredients. Easy as that.

This was the only easy part of the sleigh :) No mater how precise you draw a scheme, the lines won't be perfect and you'll have to file carefully and patiently with a scalpel or a very sharp knife. Thanks to my father I managed to assemble the sleigh just as I imagined :) I promise to upload the scheme in a few days.

Basic cookie dough

250 g flour
125 g sugar
1 bag vanilla sugar
1 egg
125 butter

Knead everything into a dough and leave in the fridge for a half an hour.

Angel eyes: Shape basic dough into thumbprint cookies and bake in a preheated oven on 200°C for about 12 minutes. When they're done and chilled sprinkle with powdered sugar and fill with apricot marmalade.

Cocoa Flowers: Add 1 Tbsp of cocoa powder into the basic dough, roll into cylinder and cut cookies with a knife. Bake in a preheated oven on 200°C for about 10-12 minutes. When they're done and chilled melt 50 g white chocolate, quickly spread it on top of each cookie and before it dries place 4 halves of pistachios and a glace sour cherry on top of each one.

Rum & Coconut Hearts: Add 1 Tbsp of cocoa powder and 1 Tbsp of rum into the basic dough. Cut out hearts with a cookie cutter and bake in a preheated oven on 200°C for about 8 minutes. Mix 75 g powdered sugar with 2 Tbsp of fresh lemon juice and spread over one side of each heart. Before it hardens sprinkle with coconut.

Chrispy Stars: With a cookie cutter cut out stars from the basic dough. Bake in a preheated oven on 200°C for about 8 minutes. When they're done and chilled melt 50 g dark chocolate and decorate the stars.

Gingerbread Stars: Use leftover gingerbread dough to make these stars. Using the same method like with rum hearts, decorate them with Minja's royal icing and coconut. This is a good way to make the fur on Santa's coat look more realistic :)

The town of Market Drayton in Shropshire is known as the "home of gingerbread" and this is proudly decreed on the welcome sign. The first recorded mention of gingerbread being baked in the town dates back to 1793; however, it was probably made earlier as ginger was stocked in high street businesses from the 1640s. Gingerbread became widely available in the 1700s. (from Wikipedia).

I am sending this to Meeta for Monthly Mingle World of Spice Cookies.

Merry Christmas everybody!