Fondant Christmas Cake (Marshmallow)

Ingredients

For Fondant

Marshmallows - 175 gram
Water - 1 tablespoon
Sugar powder - 2 cups

For Butter Cream Frosting

Butter - 250 grams
Sugar - 3 cups
Milk - 3 tablespoon

In a microwave bowl, add marshmallows and water. Keep this in microwave for about 2 minutes. Keep stirring the marshmallows every 30-40 seconds so that it will not stick. Make sure to grease the bowl and spoon with little oil or butter. I used Marshmelts Vanilla Mist. Bought it online through Amazon.  I like vanilla flavour and moreover I wanted to make a red and white Fondant cake for this Christmas. :)

Knead the fondant to get the right consistency by adding sugar. Add little oil or butter if its too sticky. Also add little icing sugar while rolling out the fondant as it prevents the fondant from sticking on to the rolling surface. Better use a plastic wrapper on the table for this.

Once the fondant shape is ready, slowly place it on top of the cake with the help of a roller. Using a fondant smoother, slowly fix the top part and the edges of the cake.

Always make sure to measure the height and length of the cake. I would suggest to consider the diameter of the cake. For example:- if the diameter is 20 cm, consider it as 22-24 cm. This will help the fondant to have enough length and will be easy to spread it on the cake without much trouble. Use colors, depending on your choice. Separate the fondant,  and use one drop of food color gel and knead it again. Or try buying, ready mix fondants.

And for the cake part, i used fruit cake recipe. Please refer to my post of  Christmas Plum Cake. Here, in the beginning, I used butter cream frosting to cover the cake. And then I used fondant on top of it. This will help the fondant to get the right shape. Also, the edges and the sides of the cake should be even for which I used the butter cream frosting on the cake. I have already published a post before for butter cream frosting. Since I don't want to repeat, am not including the steps here. This was my first attempt using a fondant. Its actually very simple just that you need to have little bit of patience for this. :)

Chicken Stew

Ingredients

Onion - 1
Tomato - 1
Potato - 1
Carrot - 1
Ginger - small piece
Garlic - 4 cloves
Tomato - 1
Curry leaves
Coriander leaves
Pepper powder - 1 teaspoon
Green chilly- 4
Chicken - 500 gm
Shallots - 4
Coriander powder - 1 tablespoon
Fennel seeds - 1/2 teaspoon
Spices powder - 1 teaspoon  (Cardamom,  cinnamon,  cloves )
Coconut Milk - 1/2 cup
Salt
Oil

Cook potato, carrot and chicken along with finely cut onion, green chilly, ginger, garlic and tomato. Also, add coriander powder and pepper powder to this. Once it is cooked, keep it for five minutes and remove the cooker lid. Now in a pan, add little oil. Once oil is hot, add shallots and saute it until it turns light brown in colour. Then add fennel seeds, curry leaves , coriander leaves and spices powder to this. Saute it for a minute. Now mix it well with already cooked vegetables and chicken. And finally add coconut milk to this and serve hot.

To make coconut milk, grind grated coconut and make a thick paste. And take only the juice using a strainer. Chicken stew goes well with Kerala Appam (vellappam), (kallappam), Puttu and even with bread.

Appam (Kinnathappam) (Raw Rice - Pancake ) (Kallappam )

Ingredients

Raw Rice - 1 kg

Salt - 1 teaspoon

Sugar - 1 cup

Grated coconut -4 cups

Cooked Rice (Any) -1 cup

Yeast - 1 tablespoon

Water - 2 tablespoon

In a mixer, grind raw rice, cooked rice and grated coconut. Make it a fine paste. Keep it in a separate bowl. In another bowl, add little water and yeast. Keep it aside for 10-15 minutes. Add this to the first bowl and soak it overnight. Next day, add sugar and salt to this. Mix it really  well. Take a plate or any type of small vessel to cook this. Make sure to grease the vessel with little oil. So it will not stick to the plate. In a steamer, cook this for 10 minutes. Once it is out of the steamer, keep it in a pan with little water. so that it will be easy to remove from the plate. Slightly tap the edges as well. It helps the Appam to come out easily from the mould. You can make different shapes using small moulds. Also, try in a plate, to get a round shape.

Try adding 1 teaspoon  of baking powder  and 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda just before cooking which is just optional in case if the batter is not fermented properly. You can make out the volume of batter becoming double if its well fermented. It has to rise little bit. You can also try adding toddy (Kallu) instead of yeast as it's a traditional way of making Appam. And the original name for this Appam is Kallappam. Its a traditional north Malabar dish especially  for Christmas. One should definitely try having this with chicken stew or any chicken curry. Its an awesome dish. Please refer to my post for chicken stew recipe :)

Christmas Cookies

Ingredients

All purpose flour -3 cups

Sugar -1 1/2 cup

Egg -2

Baking powder - 1/2 teaspoon

Salt - 1/2 teaspoon

Vanilla  essence -2 teaspoon

Unsalted  butter - 1 cup

For decoration

Jam

Icing sugar - 4 -5 tablespoon

Mix butter, sugar and vanilla extract using a hand mixer. Slowly add eggs to this and beat well until it becomes fluffy. Mix it really well. Now slowly add sifted flour, baking powder and salt to this. Knead the dough in such a way that it gets the right consistency. Keep adding little flour or butter if its too sticky or dry. Once the dough is ready, refrigerate it for 30 to 40 minutes. Preheat oven to 180 degree Celsius. Place a parchment paper on the baking tray. Roll out the dough and make different shapes using cookie cutter. Immediately transfer cookies on the tray and bake it for 10 - 15 minutes. Let it cool on a wire rack for at least 2 -5 minutes.

For decoration, I have used round shaped cookies with jam. Use round shaped cutter to make two discs for one cookie. For first disc, I have used jam in the center. And using a small cookie cutter, I have given different shapes in the center for the second disc. Keep these second discs with center cut outs on top of a wire rack. Now sprinkle little bit of icing sugar on top of it. Please refer to pics for better idea. Use jam in the center of the first disc, that is plain round shaped cookie at the bottom. You can use any jam depending on your likes. Here I have used Kissan mixed fruit jam. So that the jam in the middle will stand out and this gives the cookie that pretty look.  :)

For the other decoration. First divide the dough in to two parts. Use orange colour for one dough and pink for the other. I normally use Wilton food colour which is bit costly but highly recommended by bakers. Now make a long strip out of orange coloured dough. Repeat the method using pink coloured dough. Slowly make swirls by combining both dough. That is just twist both the doughs together so it gets a swirl effect. Cut out different shapes using cookie cutter and enjoy the colourful christmas cookies. 

I got this idea of cookies from Natalie Poeter from Vienna, Austria. :) After seeing pics of Nati's heart shaped Christmas cookies with jam, i got inspired and thought of trying it out though I have posted butter cookies before. Thanks to Clive n Nati for this idea. :)