Baking Christmas Cookies

I love to bake for Christmas, not only cookies, but cakes and muffins as well!

This weekend I'm attempting on baking Gingerbread men and women, decorated of coure, and also some sugar cookies in the shape of stars!

Here are some recipes that I love, go ahead and try them out and let me know what you think!

Gingerbread Men

• 125 g (135 ml) butter
• 100 g (125 ml) brown sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 350 g (625 ml) cake flower
• 5 ml baking soda
• 15 ml fine ginger
• 40 ml golden syrap

Preheat your oven to 180 ºC. Place some baking paper (wax paper) on your baking tray. Cream the butter and sugar together untill creamy. Add the egg yolk and mix well. Sift the flower, baking soda and ginger together. Ad the dry ingredients to the syrap and gently add to the creamy butter mixture. Mix well! Knee the mixture well and roll out between two layers of wax sheets till about 3 mm thick. Press out your gingerbread men and place on the baking tray. Bake for about 10 min and enjoy!

For great sugarcookies:

• 4½ cups of sifted flower
• 20 ml baking powder
• 2,5 ml salt
• 250 g unsalted butter
• 2 cups of sugar
• 2 eggs
• 125 ml milk
• 2 ml vanilla essence
• extra sugar to sprinkle on top

Preheat oven to 180 °C. Line your baking tray with baking paper. Sift all the dry ingredients together. Cream the butter and sugar untill light in color and creamy. Add the eggs and mix well. Now carefully add your dry ingredients and then the milk and vanilla. Mix well. Cover the dough with cling film and let it rest in the fridge for an hour. Now role out your dough (devide your dough for easier use) and make beautiful stars. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes and enjoy!

Here's a recipe for beautiful white icing and silver balls to go on top:

• 2 cups of icing sugar, sifted
• 1 egg white
• few drops of lemon juice
• silwer balletjies
• food colouring

Mix the ingredients together (excpet the silver balls and colour).Then add a colour you prefer and decorate your biscuits with icing and silver balls.

Christmas

Here's a pic of my Christmas Tree...

Post me a link to yours, I'd love to see it!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

My Trip to Hectorspruit

Hi everyone


Thought I'd pop by and tel you all about my trip I'm taking to visit my brother who lives in Hectorspruit (close to Nelspruit in SA).


This will be my very first time flying and I'm rather nervous about it lol.
My cousin and a friend of his is comming along. We're flying on 18 December 2010. Landing in Johannesburg. Riding the Gautrein to Sandton and then getting a car from there to drive to Hectorspruit.
We'll be driving a little Atos, but hey, as long as we get there thats all that matters.


I haven't seen my brother in more than a year so its going to be fun seeing him again. He moved there about 2 years ago to go and work there. He lives with his girlfriend Anmari and their 3 dogs, Duke, Killa and Chaka.


So on the Monday night we're going to the Kruger National Park and staying over, which I can not wait for!
Also we'll be visiting Mosambique and Swaziland.


I've never been to any of these places so I'm really excited to be visiting and I'll be sure to take loads of pictures to come and show you all...

About me

Hi everyone

Some of you might know me and some may not.
My name is Niecole and I live in South Africa...
I'm 25 years old (as you might have seen on my profile) and I'm currently working and studying.
What am I studying? Well I study Criminal Psychology and you can check out my other hobby at the link down under to my blog True and Ficional crime.

I wanted to start a blog where I could share things with my friends. Sometimes Facebook gets a little impersonal and I like the idea of blogging.
Just beware that although I seem like I'm on top of my game, I really am not, I have to rely on my friends to help me design my blog, but this one I'm trying out on my own.

As you can see I love my animals.
These are just a few pics of my little angels and I'll be sharing some things of them with you as we go along.
Just to give you the background on things. Shiba is my eldest, she's 11 (so 77 in doggy years) and she's a Boxer. She was abused when she was younger before she came to live with us. She's a great big softy and the mother hen of other pets (no matter what.)

Oscar is the only boy, and a grumpy old man! He's 9 (63 in doggy years) and a real grouch. He's a Minature Schnauzer and my mom spoiled him way to much when he was younger and now he thinks she belongs to him, so any one who dares come near her, he'll show you who's boss. But amazingly he gets along just fine with Shiba.

Yuki is my new baby Miniture Shar Pei, hence the chinese name. She's about 3 months old, but I dont know how old that is in human years, maybe about 2? She's a real naughty little girl who loves to chew on anything, including Shiba's ears! Every now and then she gets a growl from Oscar, but I have to tell you that girly has spunk! She's not afraid!!!

Other things that interest me is that I love to read (Check out my blog Fantasmagoriese) and I love to cook and bake. I think of myself as being creative and I'll post some things when the juices get flowing again.

I hope you'll enjoy this blog, its personal I know, but it might give you a chance to see who I am.

Chat again soon
Love
Niecole