9 more sleeps till Christmas!! Which means there is about to be a serious baking explosion going down in my kitchen over the next week during the day, and a whole lot of knitting every night. Thank goodness for online shopping or I’d not have any actual gifts to give out!
I have a soft spot for the Robin Hood flour characters, Elizabeth and Andrew. They’re adorable and remind me, in reverse, of my Wee One #1 and Wee One #2. So I do a lot of their recipes and recently, Robin Hood came out with a new recipe booklet, The Love of Baking. Elizabeth and Andrew are painfully absent from the collection of recipes, but I can forgive them because there are a lot of fun recipes in here.
Citrus fruit and Christmas never really went together in my mind until I married into a family that always puts clementines in the stockings. I will openly admit my parents tucked a ridiculous amount of toys in our stockings as kids, sometimes candy but never clementines – or nuts or anything else like that. I mean, we always had that stuff out on trays and in bowls around the house – but it wasn’t a Christmas thing. So, since we’ve been married (11 years in the spring!), I have developed a connection between Christmas and citrus fruits (my mother-in-law puts clementines in my stocking too!) and my husband now eats clementines year round, though he still calls them Christmas oranges!
In the spirit of adopting this citurs = festive feeling, I made these for my husband and my in laws. Hopefully, they love them. If they do, I’ll make them every year!
Sugary Citrus Twists – from The Love of Baking
1 cup sugar 1 cup butter 2 tbsp freshly grated lemon rind 2 eggs + sugar for sprinkling |
4 egg yolks 1 tsp vanilla extract 4 cups flour 1 tsp salt |
Beat sugar with butter and rind until fluffy, beat in the eggs, yolks and vanilla until well mixed. Add the flour and salt. Beat until blended.
Flour your counter a bit and knead the dough – but don’t over handle it! Shape the dough into two 10″ long logs. Mine were so long I couldn’t get a decent photo. Slice these into 12 pieces each and I found it worked best to roll each of those pieces into a little ball and set them aside till I was ready for them.
Then, working with one dough ball at a time cut it in half and roll each half into little ropes, about 4″. The Robin Hood recipe says to roll the whole thing into an 8″ rope and cut that in half, but I found this to be a lot easier.
Then make an X with the two ropes and twist them around each other! Simple and cute! Set it on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and do the rest!
Sprinkle with sugar before you pop them in the oven – 8 minutes or so at 350.
*This recipe is great to make the day before decorating sugar or butter cookies, because you have 4 egg whites for the royal icing.*
Now, if you’ll excuse me. I’m off to bake gingerbread cupcakes, craft with the kids and knit my little fingers off. <3