…I forgot to share with you my little goody gift packs I made for the holidays, and felt they deserved a bit of blog love.
Using these super cool edible marker pens, I decorated tiny shortbread cookies. The pens have a paint brush-like tip and though they seem to have mixed reviews, I thought they were very easy to use. I whipped up the same recipe as these and also used a gingerbread cookie recipe from here (you can kind of see the gingerbread cookies in the image below). I like to avoid using raw egg whites for icing, so I found this recipe which had the perfect consistency and gloss I wanted. I skipped the almond extract though.
These cookies are seriously mini (about 1.5 inches in height), and I swear I must’ve gobbled at least twenty of them while assembling the gifts.
Then I packaged them up in cute little jars with the requisite baker’s twine.
And I tried my hand at caramel making, which felt kind of like a science experiment. The bubbling that happened when I poured in the cream mixture freaked me out, but all was well. Now, these are literally melt-in-your-mouth confections in that they didn’t really harden. At all. Ooey, gooey, delicious, but crazy messy – that’s what they were. They are probably not the most appetizing looking things (notice how I deliberately did not focus on the actual caramel), but I personally loved them. The flavor is intense and I’ve been dropping one into my daily homemade latte these last couple of weeks – tastes amazing! I used Ina’s version and think I may not have gotten up to the correct temperature to get the caramels to harden.
We distributed them to friends and succumbed to our own sugar coma – I will definitely be making the cookies and caramels again next year!
it’s never too late for christmas cookies :)!
Hear, hear Katka! 🙂
Great packaging (and photography!) of the cookies, which sound like they taste as good as they look:) As for caramels, I’ve about given up on making them as I seem to never be able to achieve the proper hardness-factor. I have the opposite problem, and they typically end up being hard as rock and almost impossible to cut. I’ve read that you need to calibrate your candy thermometer before every use – perhaps your thermometer was the issue? However, the end result of yumminess always delights:)
Ah, calibrating the candy thermometer…how do I do that? I do suspect it was my cheap-o thermometer that was the problem. I actually made two batches of the caramels and they were both too soft.
Hello, I’ve been enjoying reading your blog since finding it during KCWC. The christmas packages look lovely. I’ve thought of getting those food markers and allowing my son and friends to decorate (or, more, likely, graffiti) a fondant-iced cake – do you think 8-year-olds would find it easy to use them? As for caramels, I also tried them this year for the first time, using this recipe: http://www.makeit-loveit.com/2012/12/chewy-creamy-microwavable-caramels-yum.html#more-13361 – and I have to say, they were dangerously good!
Hi Marisa! So glad you’ve been visiting my blog. 🙂 Yes, I think an 8-year-old could easily use the markers. The only real finicky thing about them is that you have to occasionally wet the tip to get the “ink” flowing from time to time. And thank you for the caramel recipe! So much faster and easier than the one I used. I’m going to try this weekend!