Tag: Christmas cookies

Baked By Steph Christmas Cookies

Children, Christmas, Food & Drink, Gifts for children, Gifts for Her, Gifts for Him, Gifts for teachers, Stocking Fillers, Vegan

Disclaimer: We recievd this product free of charge for the purpose of this review but all thoughts and opinions are our own

With Christmas fast approaching I find myself racing around trying to fit everything in. I have a long list of family members to buy for and as we won’t see everyone over the Christmas period, I am looking for gifts with a wow factor that can be ordered online and delivered straight to them.

Baked by Steph is a company I have only just discovered who create the most amazing and beautifully iced biscuits and treats that are perfect as Christmas gifts. The company started back in Jan 2019 when Steph’s enjoyment of baking snowballed from a hobby into a full time job and her biscuits were so popular she quickly outgrew her flat! She now has a bakery in East London where they create beautiful cookies, biscuits and treats and ship around the UK.

I received a box of the Merry Christmas Message Letter Box Cookies (RRP £18) and the Candyland Christmas Letterbox Cookies (RRP £26) which, as you can see from the photos, look absolutely stunning. My biscuits were beautifully packaged in pink carboard boxes, and they arrived in perfect condition thanks to being secured to the paper with a tiny bit of icing, meaning they don’t move around in transit. They all looked delicious, the hardest part was deciding which one to try first!

The cookies are gingerbread and tasted absolutely scrumptious  – nice and crisp and with just a hint of ginger. Despite being covered in icing they didn’t taste too sweet and were very moreish. The icing was crisp and just the right thickness so you could taste both the cookie and the icing.

These handmade cookies will make a lovely Christmas gift for friends or family this Christmas, or just order some for yourself – I won’t tell!!

The last day to order for this Christmas is 21st December so there’s still time to place an order. And don’t worry, they’re not only for Christmas – if you look at the website you’ll find cookies for birthdays, anniversaries, new babies, congratulations along with pretty much every seasonal event and occasion.

Guittard Chocolate Company’s Chocolate Chips for Baking

Children, Christmas, Family Life, Food & Drink, Gluten Free, Home & Garden

Disclaimer – We received this item free for the purpose of this review/feature but all words and opinions are our own.

I won’t pretend that I’m the world’s best baker.  I do have a few recipes I rotate though, but when I was sent the Guittard Chocolate Company’s Chocolate Chips for Baking, the recipes came out! 

Each pack contains 340g of chips, which is a lot if you consider how much you need for baking. The high quality chocolate lasts a while though, so you can seal up the packet and leave it for baking another day.  I tried a few of the chocolate chips as a snack (someone has to!) and the Green Mint chocolate chips especially are very flavoursome with the mint scent obvious as soon as you open them.

Guittard are the oldest chocolate producers in the United States and are still family run today, based in San Francisco.  We were sent three varieties; Green Mint, Choc-Au-Lait White and Milk Chocolate baking chips. What to bake?

I decided to keep it simple and see how the baking chips fared with my cooking.  A chocolate-chip cookie recipe with added Green Mint baking chips seemed like a good start.  The baking chips themselves are a good size to add to a cookie mixture, but can also be used to melt down and use as a decoration or coating.  In this instance, I used them to add some flavour to these cookies which otherwise only had sugar and butter as a flavouring.

As you can see from the outcome, the cookies didn’t rise as I expected them to! Once cooled off though, they tasted just right, with the Mint Green chips adding all the flavour that was needed. The chocolate didn’t melt in the oven at all, the chips kept their shape, as well as their flavour. The chips themselves were yummy!

All of the chocolates are free from peanuts, tree nuts and gluten. The Milk Chocolate and Choc-Au-Laid are also non-GMO verified and the Milk Chocolate chips are 100% real chocolate with 31% cacao. 

There are more flavours available on the Ocado website including; Super Cookie Milk Chocolate, Extra Dark Chocolate and Butterscotch, which along with the Green Mint and Choc-Au-Lait was launched for this Christmas.

Prices between £5.60 and £6.25 for various weights, these are lovely time-saving additions to the store cupboard for over the Christmas holidays, or for baking with the children when it’s cold.

Available at:

https://www.ocado.com/search?entry=guittard