Festive Food Idea Day 3- Cookie Christmas Puddings

Today's 'Festive Food Idea' is a chocolatey chip cookie treat cleverly disguised as a Christmas pudding!

Makes 12 medium cookie puds


Ingredients

Cookie Base

- 200g unsalted butter
- 300g light brown muscovado sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
- 300g self raising flour (I used Doves Farm gluten free option)
- 75g cocoa powder
- 200g milk chocolate chips
- 1 tsp baking powder

Christmas Pudding Top

- 240g white icing powder
- 6 tbsp warm water
- Ready to roll red icing
- Ready to roll green icing

- Optional - 

- White edible glitter

Method  (Little helpers will need an adult for this)

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 (180c/ 350f)

2. Weigh the empty mixing bowl you plan to use

2. Whisk butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then add vanilla extract and eggs one at a time

3. Separately, sift the icing sugar into a bowl with cocoa powder and baking powder, then add to the mix

4.  Add the flour, one third at a time to the mix, then add chocolate chips and fold in until combined and no flour is visible

5. For accuracy weigh the whole mixture, minus the weight of the bowl and divide this by the number of cookies you wish to make (E,g- 9 cookies)

6. Spoon out the mixture onto a flat baking tray lined with greaseproof baking paper weighing each dollop (this will help ensure the cookies are of a similar size) and letting the mixture drop off the spoon

7. Bake in the oven at gas mark 4 (180c/ 350f) for 12-15 minutes depending on cookie size and remove. The cookies will be soft when they leave the oven. I left them to cool completely for a number of hours before decorating

Decoration

1. Sift icing sugar into a bowl and add one tbsp of warm water at a time, stop if the mixture becomes too runny (it should be able to slide very slowly from the spoon)

2. In a wavy pattern add the icing sugar to the top third of the cookie, covering the semi-circle completely, repeat for each cookie and leave to dry a few minutes. Keep any spare icing as this will be used later

3. Roll out the green ready to roll icing to 3mm depth and use a holly-leaf cookie cutter (or shape yourself) to make the leaf shape. Take a small dab of icing and use to stick the leaf to the centre top of the cookie

4. Take the ready to roll read icing and by hand roll into small balls to resemble the holly's berries, one per pudding and use icing sugar to stick the berry to the leaf