Simple Chocolate Cupcakes

It's always good to have a few recipes for home-made treats that are relatively quick and easy to make, and you know will turn out perfectly every time.  One of the best treats is a chocolate cupcake.  They're perfect for almost any occasion (including when you just need a chocolate fix).

My daughter wanted to visit her old preschool.  She wanted them to be able to see how grown up she is in her school uniform, and to wish them a Merry Christmas.  So the girls and I made chocolate cupcakes together.  This is the kind of recipe that still turns out well when you're letting your kids do all of the measuring and mixing.

For my simple chocolate cupcake recipe, click here.

We gave them the cupcakes with a Christmas card.  We wanted to individually wrap them so that all of the teachers and other workers could bring one home with them, and wanted to make them Christmasy.  Here's what we did.

To add a Christmasy feel, we made a mint chocolate icing.  I used a piping bag without a nozzle.  To be even more festive, add some crushed candy canes into the icing and then sprinkle a little on the top.  We sprinkled edible glitter on the top because it looked festive and reminded us of snow.

To individually wrap them, we used plastic sandwich bags.  We put them in then tied around the bag with scraps of festive ribbon.  This is great because you can use up any scraps you have leftover from wrapping presents or other festive activities.  We had a mix of different red and gold ribbons.

These made a delicious and really simple Christmas gift.

Making A Christmas Wreath

Nothing adds a bit of Christmas cheer to a house like a wreath. The ones that you can buy, though, are often over-priced and, to be honest, not that great looking. Making your own wreath, though, is a great way to get into the Christmas spirit.

To start with, you need a base to hold your wreath in shape and give it structure. I have a woven wooden wreath that I bought for a few pounds at a craft store, but you could also use a floral foam ring, a shaped wire, etc. You just want a basis to work from to help hold everything together and keep it in a circle.

Then you can use whatever greenery you have available. My daughters and I went into the garden with a basket, and picked some holly, evergreen branches, rosemary, roses (including leaves, rose hips, and flowers), St. John's wort, ivy, etc. Pick a nice selection of green leaves from whatever you have growing around your home.

Then shape it around your ring. My base ring is woven twigs, so I can stick branches into it, and you can also use floral rings to push things directly into. However, you could also use twine, string, or wire to secure the foliage to the wreath. Experiment moving pieces of foliage around the ring until you find a shape that you're happy with, and add some "features": rose hips, holly berries, a twig of mistletoe, etc. If you want, you can add a nice bow out of ribbon, some cinnamon sticks, or other Christmas-y items.

When we finished the wreath and hung it on the front door, Miriam exclaimed, "Wow. The house looks all beautiful for Christmas. Good job mummy!" Then she insisted that we use the leftover greenery to decorate inside the house, so we now have beautiful leaves decorating our mantelpiece as well.

Christmas Treat Plates

One of the great things about Christmas time is making Christmas treats. Even people who never venture near an oven feel the urge to make Christmas cookies or attempt a Christmas cake. Baked goods and other treats can make great Christmas gifts.

Everyone has people that they want to do more than just a card for, but don't really want to buy a gift for (for example, your children's teachers, neighbours, friends at church, etc.). Putting together little plates of treats is fun, easy, and relatively inexpensive, and makes a great home-made gift. We recently made up some plates of goodies for people that we go to church with and my daughter's preschool teachers.

It's traditional at Christmas (here in England at least) to have mince pies. The problem is, not very many people actually like mince pies. So we made mini apple pies instead. I cheated for the sake of time and used pre-made pastry, and just rolled it out myself. I put it in buttered and floured muffin tins, and blind baked the shell (to blind bake, line the uncooked pie shell/pastry with greaseproof paper, and put something like dried beans on top of that, and part bake in the oven. This makes sure the the bottom of the shell is properly cooked and doesn't go soggy when the filling is added). Then we filled it with the apple filling. Earlier in the year when we harvested our apples, we had jarred some apple butter: spiced apple sauce. I pulled that out, and added some chopped crystallized ginger and mixed dried fruit (mostly raisins and candied orange peel). If you don't have apple butter, you could use plain apple sauce, and add cinnamon, and a dash of cloves and nutmeg, as well as some brown sugar and dried fruit. We filled the mini pie shells.

For the top of the pies, we wanted something that was easy and seasonal. So we rolled out the pie crust, and then with the kitchen scissors we cut out shapes like stars and hearts that we placed on top of the pies.

After that we baked them for about 20 minutes. The result was adorable. Single serving size, delicious mini pies that looked Christmasy.

We also made rice crispy treats (your standard butter, melted marshmallows or marshmallow cream, and rice crispies ones with sprinkles on top). The girls loved it because they could do almost all of it by themselves.

We also made mini brownies (in paper cupcake cases), with white chocolate drizzled on top, and several varieties of sugar cookies (I'll try to do a separate post on those, including recipes).