Every post tagged “seasonal baking”.
7 posts with this tag
Eight nights is a marathon, not a bake. One double batch of dough, three shapes and a night-by-night plan that keeps the fiddly dreidel letters for an evening when you have the patience, plus the exact icing ratios for a blue that stays blue and a white that stays white.
One handful of shapes can carry the whole month: stars and baubles for gift boxes, gingerbread rolled to hang from the tree without drooping, and a three-cutter line-up for the family baking day. Our plan for December, with real sizes, yields and the shapes to leave in the shop.
Bonfire Night lands in the wettest week of the British calendar, so plan to be indoors: rocket and sparkler biscuits finished with cinder toffee shards, the tradition explained for readers abroad, and a timing plan that works around the rain.
Mithai is a hot-syrup craft, which is why the kids end up watching. Diya, star and rangoli biscuits put them in charge: a cardamom-pistachio dough that keeps its edges, colour laid down the way a rangoli is, and boxes for the neighbours that hold their own next to the barfi.
The hard part of a sugar skull is the symmetry, and a stamped cutter does that bit for you. A Día de los Muertos step-by-step where the stamp draws the lines, you colour them in, and nobody pipes anything — plus what the calavera actually means.
The ghost earns its keep, the spider never does. Our honest ranking of Halloween shapes: which cutters decorate easily in two colours, which look great in the drawer and terrible iced, and the right sizes for a class of thirty or a trick-or-treat bag.
Pressed mooncakes need a mould, lye water and a day you don't have. Rabbit and full-moon cut-out cookies need a bowl, a cutter and a good story. A dough that holds its shape, the Jade Rabbit tale for the chill, and three ways to get the mooncake look without a press.