Bake yourself a very merry Christmas – Lindy’s Christmas pudding cookies feature on magazine cover

Christmas pudding cookies, what a wonderfully festive sweet treat. Every Christmas I bake and decorate cookies in all shapes and sizes. So imagine my delight when I discovered the Christmas pudding cookies I’d baked and decorated for the November issue of Cake Decoration and Sugarcraft Magazine, on the front cover. Not only are my cookies on the front cover, but the image being used was mine – wow! I enjoy photography but find cake photography very time consuming and tricky. I’ve had a lot to photograph recently, with our new website re-branding, so have had plenty of practice. Even so, each cake or cookie is different and presents its own challenges.

In the magazine, I have not one, but three step, step-by-step cookie decorating projects. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed putting this Christmas inspired feature together for you. Below is a summary of what you’ll find in this months magazine:

Christmas Holly Place Name Cookies

If you are looking for a unique way to add place names to your Christmas table, these holly leaves could be the answer. If you can’t find a holly cookie cutter, simply make yourself a holly leaf template and use it to help out leaf shapes from your dough. Tip: making templates using plastic milk bottles works really well.

The names are added using a pointed oval cutter, a fluid writer and lettering template. Click on the names to find out more about these products. Here is a link to the name template which I’m sure you will find useful.

Christmas Tree Cookie

For me, Christmas begins in earnest once the Christmas tree is up and lovingly decorated. Interestingly, although fir trees have been used to celebrate Christmas for about a thousand years, the first ones in the UK didn’t appear until the 1830’s. It was, of course, Prince Albert who helped popularise this wonderful tradition.

Over the years I have immortalised these decorative festive trees in cake and sugar many times. I have created tree cakes for magazines and you’ll find them in my books, each time they are unique and different. This is Christmas tree shaped cookie is certainly not your run of the mill cookie!

This design is a little different, rather than being a flat iced cookie, I have used the Lindy’s Cakes Moghal arch cutter to create textured green branches, which in turn have been decorated festively with edible sprinkles. I hope it inspires you. This cookie is a special centrepiece rather than a design you can easily make for everyone. However, it is highly effective and is sure to get everyone talking.

Festive Christmas pudding Cookies

Christmas puddings have a fascinating history. They originate in the 14^th century when they were made with beef and mutton as well as raisins, wine and spices. They were banned by the Puritans in 1664 but re-established as part of the Christmas meal by King George 1 in 1714. The Victorians changed the puddings into what we eat today, however at the time puddings were often cooked in fancy moulds shaped as towers or castle. Ordinary people, however, steamed puddings in the ball shape moulds, much as some of us do today.

My pudding inspired cookies are easy yet effective to make. You will need brown and white sugarpaste for the pudding itself and some red and green modelling paste for the holly that tops the pudding. Add texture to the pudding using simple everyday tools, then a professional looking top using a paint splat – a must have cutter!

Click on the step pictures above to take you to the Lindy’s Cakes cutter page of our shop, where you will find our quality stainless steel holly cutters and paint splat cutter, so you too can create Christmas pudding cookies.

Full Step-by-step Instructions

Full instructions for each of my cookie projects are available in the magazine as detailed above. It is on sale during the month of October and thereafter as a download from the publishers.

Sweet wishes
Lindy Smith

Bringing world-class sugarcraft into your kitchen