Christmas series: episode 1 : Gingerbread cookies and kul kuls:🎄🎄🎄

Ginger bread cookies and kul kuls:

Welcome to Little chefs Christmas! Christmas is just two days away and I am in a complete holiday spirit! This time I wanted to do something different for Christmas and I am starting it off with ginger bread cookies and fried cookies. I will be posting more Christmas recipes and I hope you like them!

The cookie:

Ingredients:

1 cup all purpose flour

½ cup brown sugar

¼ cup butter

2 tbsp honey

1 ½ tsp ginger powder

¼ tsp cloves powder

Pinch of grated nutmeg

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon powder

Directions:

. First, sieve the flour, baking powder, baking soda, ginger, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg in a plate or bowl. If you don’t have any of the powders, don’t worry! You can make them at home. Just dry roast them and blend it to make a powder.

. Then cream together softened , unsalted butter and brown sugar. You could use normal granulated sugar but we are looking for the rich, and brown look and taste in this cookie.

. When it is fluffy, add in the honey. You could use molasses also and that is only traditionally used but honey also acts as a great replacement.

. After mixing it, add it to the flour mixture. Form a mixture of it and transfer it to a board. . Out of this,form a crumbly dough,crumbly enough to hold its shape.

. Now, cling wrap it and refrigerate it for 1 hour. Then, roll it out with a rolling pin about 2 mm thick. Cut it in any shape with any cutter that you would like.

. Preheat the oven at 180* C for 10 minutes and grease the baking tray slightly with butter or oil. Place the cut cookie dough shapes on this and bake it for 20 minutes at 180* C , till the edges are brown.

The icing:

Ingredients:

4 tbsp icing sugar

2 tsp water

Directions:

. If you don’t have icing sugar of confectioners sugar, then you can even make it at home! For this, first add 3 tbsp of granulated sugar to a blender jar along with a tsp of corn flour. Blend it together for a few times and keep mixing in intervals. Then sieve it in a bowl and the icing sugar is ready!

. Now,add water slowly and mix it. It would form a glaze consistency and you can adjust the thickness and thinness by adding more sugar or water.

. Once the cookies are baked, let them cool down completely and transfer the icing to a piping bag or zip lock bag. Make a tiny cut and decorate the cookies as you like! You can get very creative at his point. You can add colours, candies,pearls,sprinkles,anything!

Fried cookies-kul kuls:

Ingredients:

1 cup flour

½ cup powdered sugar

2 tbsp melted butter

Oil to fry

1 tsp vanilla essence

Water as needed

½ tsp baking powder

Directions:

. First, sieve flour , sugar and baking powder in a plate.

. Then melt the butter and let it come to room temperature . Rub it nicely with the flour and make sure it’s completely mixed

. Then, add the vanilla and slowly water to form a dough. It should be like a cookie dough and a little crumbly.

Then, take a small part of the dough and press it against a fork to form this shape. Then seal it on the other side so it doesn’t open up while frying.

. This is similar to pasta shaping process. Switch on the heat for the oil and make sure that the oil is medium hot. Fry the kul kuls in batches and until it turns golden brown.

. After it is done, let it cool down completely and enjoy!

merry Christmas! Happy holidays everyone!