Sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies are traditional staples for the holiday season, and when I was a child we had the tradition of making frosted sugar cookies every year for Christmas. Every year I looked forward to cutting out cookies with our stash of festive cookie cutters and decorating them with different icing colors to my little heart’s content, but looking back, making and decorating them was always much more fun than eating them. Frosted sugar cookies are definitely super cute, but they’re also super sweet so it’s easy to get tired of them after a few bites. However, it wouldn’t feel like Christmas without cookies, so for the last couple of years I’ve been making these gingerbread cookies instead, which are a bit less sweet and packed with spicy ginger, cinnamon, and cloves flavor. Plus, I started adding limocello to the icing, so they really are the perfect adult Christmas cookie. If you’re bored of traditional Christmas cookies definitely give these a shot★[Continue Reading/続きを読む]
Mulled Wine Cake Bites (with bonus absinthe cake bites!)
As those of you who have been following me on Instagram know, in the spring and summer I make a fair amount of varieties of sangria and even made some sangria cupcakes, which were surprisingly quite tasty. And since sangria is to summer as mulled wine is to winter, when I was making my last batch of mulled wine I got to wondering if it would be good in cupcakes as well. My friend had a birthday in late November and I figured that would be a good opportunity to put this idea to the test, but since someone else was already bringing a proper cake to the party I decided that cake bites (cake pops without the stick) would make for a better gift since they are easier to take home and keep. The final result was the perfect mix of spicy and sweet and fruity, plus I had enough cake and frosting ingredients left to make a batch of absinthe cake bites (with this recipe) so you’re getting two recipes for the price of one today.
Mulled Wine (Hot Spiced Wine)
To be completely honest, even though I was born in the arctic (read: Minneapolis, Minnesota), I am not good with the cold, and for that very reason I have mixed feeling about the arrival of December. On the one hand, I like the Christmas season and all the lights and foods that transport me back to childhood, but on the other hand starting from December it just gets colder and colder in Tokyo and I am not about that life. However, as long as I have a batch of mulled wine (red wine heated with citrus, honey, and spices popular in the UK and Europe) to evoke the Christmas spirit and warm my body on cold nights, somehow I know that somehow I will make it through the winter, so today I’m posting a recipe for mulled wine that can be easily made with ingredients readily available in Japan. [Continue Reading/続きを読む]