This Christmas, take inspiration from the traditional treats of Austria, Scotland, Italy and France
Mince pies
Ingredients:
Sweet paste (eggless) 100 gm, Orange peel 30 gm, broken cashewnuts 30 gm, raisin 40 gm, almond flakes 30 gm, black currant 30 gm, red cherry 50 gm, cinnamon powder 2 gm, nutmeg 1 gm, cloves powder 0.5 gm, cardamom powder 2 gm, ginger powder 1 gm, orange juice 50 gm, castor sugar 10 gm and pieces of vanilla sponge 100 gm.
Method Spread sweet paste on a sheet of dough. Cut required size of tart moulds. Place the cut out pieces in the mould and refrigerate for half an hour. Soak fruits and spices in orange juice for half an hour. Mix vanilla sponge pieces and scoop into the tart moulds. Cover with another layer of sweet paste and brush it with milk wash. Stick a star on top of it and dust it with castor sugar. Bake at 180 C for 10-12 minutes.
— Olivier Vincenot
Vanillekipferl Ingredients Soft butter 150 gm, powdered sugar 70 gm, vanilla sugar 8 gm and 200 gm, white almond flour 100 gm and white flour 200 gm Method Mix the soft butter, powdered sugar and vanilla sugar (8 gms) until smooth. Then add white flour to the butter mixture along with almond flour. Incorporate the ingredients with your hands till a smooth pastry is formed. Let it rest for an hour in the fridge.
After an hour, form the dough into a sausage shape with a 2 cm thickness. Cut thick slices of 20 gm each. Preheat oven to 200 Celsius!
Roll each slice into a smaller sausage with pointed ends and shape it into a half moon. Bake for 10 minutes or until light yellow. Toss the cookies in vanilla sugar once they are baked, and cool.
—Sriram Aravumudan Cranachan Ingredients Rolled oats 2/3 cup, raspberries (frozen and thawed)/strawberries/blueberries 425 gm, double cream 400 ml, honey 1/3 cup and Scotch 60ml. Method Lightly toast the oats in a frying pan for three to four minutes, make sure they don’t get over toasted.
Thaw the frozen berries. Then push 300 gm of your choice of berries through a fine sieve to discard the seeds, if any. With a whisk, whip the cream to get soft peaks.
Mix honey and whiskey together and then fold with the cream until just combined.
In the serving jars, start with a layer a cream and then the raspberry puree, whole raspberries, toasted oats, a layer of cream to finish and then put few raspberries on the top and sprinkle oats and serve.
—Sandhya Pradhan
