Christmas Cookies

I've been promising to make some kind of tasty treat for my team at work ever since they bought me a wonderful selection of baking goodies for my birthday in September. It's taken a couple of months but I've finally got around to it (woops...bad friend, sorry!) - I did consider the cupcake option, but we're a team of cookie lovers so when I saw this post on Anna's blog, I couldn't resist attempting mini Christmas puds of my own. They're just too cute.

I actually used her original chocolate cookie recipe and then went a bit cray with the decoration - I may have been mildly possessed by some kind of obsessive icing perfectionist. After they'd been half-dipped in white chocolate (because there definitely isn't enough chocolate in them already...), I cut some holly leaves out of ready-made green icing and popped them on whilst the chocolate was still setting to create something which half resembled a little pudding. I then piped on a few red berries using some of those little icing tubes you can buy at the supermarket and this was the finished result! 

One thing I would say is if you wanted to use this kind of green icing too, try to keep it fairly cool when you're working with it - I was cutting the leaves out free hand and by the end, a couple of them were starting to tear and stretch a bit as the icing warmed up and became softer, which was really annoying. The obsessive icing perfectionist in me was not a happy bunny and this may have resulted in some unnecessary carnage when the unsuccessful attempts were squashed into a ball of failure and ended up in the bin, but I suppose that's just the way the cookie crumbles (no pun intended). In fact, if I were you, I'd find some kind of holly-leaf shaped cutter to save your frustration - either that or just don't stress if it's not expertly done, they're only gonna end up being scoffed down in about 2 minutes flat anyway. 

Having sampled one or two cookies myself (gotta check they're not going to poison anyone right?), I can vouch for their classic 'crunchy on the outside, gooey in the middle' texture. I have to say, they taste pretty damn good and it seems that everyone else agreed - they went down a storm! A really quick and easy biscuit recipe (props to Anna) and perfect as a festive treat or whipped up minus the decoration any time you find yourself with a cookie craving.

Merry Christmas!