A pair of days ago, when Christmas was done and dusted, we had the pleasure to see the first snow of the year! I mean, the snow can be a pain in the ass if you are stuck somewhere and need to use a car, but otherwise I can’t help but loving it. The air starts feeling freezing and biting and the landscape looking so elegant in its new total-white outfit. There’s something so magical about the snow in the festive period, and maybe it’s just that we’re used to imagine Christmas white, but it has been the icing on the good piece of cake that Christmas has been this year!

We wore our fur-lined parkas and went outside to enjoy our first snow together and the view of my boyfriend’s backyard that looked pretty much as magical as it can get. I felt like in a big beautiful snow globe or in the prettiest winter wonderland and got pretty much as excited as humanly possible. We played a very short snowball fight and breathed the crisp air once again before heading back into the warm hug of the home to continue to enjoy the sight through the window. It was so magical and beautiful and brought up memories of a childhood while we were building some new ones together!

I’M WEARING ::
TOP – H&M (SIMILAR) ; SKIRT – ASOS (SIMILAR) ; SOCKS – ASOS ;
PARKA – OLD (SIMILAR) ; SHOES – SIMILAR ; GLOVES – ASOS.

SHOP THE POST!

Hey there! Hope y’all have had a very lovely time these past few days! In my last catch up post I told you I was going to come back pretty soon with a new update about my Christmas: deciding where to stay on Christmas day was not so easy, but in the end I spent Christmas eve at home, wrapping presents and baking and eating delicious food (and we went to watch The Hobbit too!) and Christmas day at my boyfriend’s place – where the filling-the-belly-of-delicious-food got very serious. I came back with a food baby after eating my body weight in appetizers, spaghetti with clams, chicory lasagna, grilled tuna and roasted potatoes, and pineapple + vanilla ice cream! Not to mention the huge amount of pastry treats: tiramisu and pistachio yule logs, amazing festive chocolates and Santa-shaped panettone were definitely my favourite things of Christmas! Not bad that my boyfriend’s uncle is one of the most known pastry chef of Milan, uh?!

Santa was super good to me this year and brought me a tun of cute presents I’m so thankful for including a huge box of chocolate from said pastry shop, the cutest slippers, the softest blanket, festive nail varnishes and all sort of beauty treats! The last pair of days have been spent eating leftovers and more panettone, and enjoying the festive spirit for a bit longer. Today’s snowing and I’m super excited! What were you up to at Christmas this year? I’m super curious to get to know everything you ate 😉 x

Somewhere in the world it’s almost Christmas at this time (exciting!), so I thought I’d put together a very festive post to wish you all the best for Christmas day! Christmas eve calls for festive baking, let me tell you this: it’s kind of a tradition now over here, the very last pair of days before Christmas I bring out the baking trays and make a huge gingerbread dough to crack on with festive baking. Side by side with sipping hot sweet tea while wrapping up all the gift in cute snowflakes-printed wrapping paper, baking gingerbread cookies brings out the best of the little Christmas fairy which is definitely in me and it’s probably one of my favourite things to do that make me feel the Christmas atmosphere is finally around, especially if said cookies are meant to be given away to friends and family..!

As much as I love buying presents for my loved ones, freshly baked sweet treats are the thing I majorly prefer to give away! If I haven’t convinced you yet to give handmade gifts this Christmas, maybe you’ll be interested in baking some of these delicious chocolate gingerbread cookies to spoil yourself a tiny bit – but if I were you, I’d avoid to be selfish at Christmas and share them with others just so that you can keep all the rest of future baked goodies for yourself in 2015, because you know, you have been good at Christmas! Plus receiving cookies make people smile, and that’s always a huge plus!

Make around 50 cookies | Ingredients :
200g unsalted butter or margarine
360g white flour
200g white sugar
4 egg yolks
4 tsp cocoa powder
3 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp baking powder

1 :: Soften the cubed butter in the microwaves for a couple of minutes without melting it down completely. Cubes are meant to be soft but not melted.

2 :: Mix together the flour, baking powder, cocoa and ginger in a big deep bowl until well incorporated, then add the egg yolks and whisk all up using an electric whisk.

3 :: Add the soften butter all at once together with the other ingredients and keep mixing until the butter has incorporated nicely with the rest of the mixture. It can take five minutes or more, but in the end you’ll be left with a very thick dough you might want to shape into a sphere using your hands before covering it up with some plastic wrap.

4 :: Place the dough in the fridge and let it chill for at least 30 minutes before moving on.

5 :: Remove the dough from the fridge, and cut two big squares of parchment paper. Place the dough on one of the foils and cover it up using the other parchment paper foil. Using a rolling pin, smooth the dough over until 0.5cm thick. You might need to cut the dough in half and work on half of it per time as things can get a bit tricky with a huge dough!

6 :: Shape your biscuits with some Christmassy pastry cutters and place them onto a baking tray lined with some parchment paper. Shape the leftover dough into a sphere and repeat the flattening and shaping until you’re left with no dough at all!

7 :: Bake in preheated oven at 170°C for 20 minutes (15 if you like your cookies to be a bit more on the chewy side). Take them out of the oven and leave them chill and cool down on their tray for at least 5 minutes! – You’ll notice you’ll need more than one tray for all the biscuits, but you can still bake two biscuits trays at once in a fan oven, same temperature!

Once they’ve cool down completely take little clear food sachets and fill them up with a handful of cookies, then tie them up with a cute festive ribbon or some red and white twine, and you’re good to go to friends and family and make them happy with some festive delicious treats! They’ll love the fact you thought of mixing things up adding a chocolate-y flavour instead of going for the usual gingerbread recipe, and will be delighted by the huge amount of funny and cute shapes their biscuits have!

I hope you lovely readers are going to have a very merry Christmas, to bake a lot, to feel festive, to enjoy the delicious food and to share smiles with your loved ones… have a beautiful Christmas you lovely ones! x