Rednosed Reindeer Muffins

As my birthday is in December, I am lucky enough to make lots of great winter- and Christmas-themed treats for my birthday parties - including these reindeer muffins that I had discovered on Pinterest and the Melting Snowman Cookies following in the next post... the basis for these muffins are my very first chocolate muffins, but you can use any muffins you like!

Cashew Toffees

This recipe for cashew toffees, just as the  as Nougat Cookies, from my very first Brigitte Cookie magazine, and I als modified this recipe slightly. Cooking the condensed mass is a little difficult, you really have to be careful that nothing burns and stir all the time, and if the mass has not thickened enough, it bubbles up in the oven, takes a long time to solidify, and sticks very much at the cutting. But with some practice, it works quite well and the toffees are just so amazingly tasty that I take the trouble every year - I can really recommend them!

Nadine's Nougat Cookies

Yeah, okay, actually it's not Nadine's Nougat Cookies but Brigitte's, because the recipe for it from a Brigitte Cookie magazine several years ago, just like the following recipe for cashew toffees. They have these cookie magazines each year, but these two recipes are my absolute favorites and almost always when I can choose a recipe for a cookie-baking sessions with girlfriends, I make the nougat cookies or cashew toffees ... and usually both! 
I slightly modified the Brigitte recipe, see below.

Handbag and cycling shoes from velvet cake (Brown Velvet Cake)

For the birthday of my world best sister, I made a handbag this year, as a voucher for a real handbag, and matching cycling shoes as a gift voucher from her boyfriend. I had planned to make red velvet cake, but I didn't have enough red food coloring left, I thought purple would be nice - that is, I used red and blue paste color and purple powder color. Well, as you can see, all that made a pretty velvety brown... at one point, however, you can see a little purple streak ;-) I was not that happy with the used recipe and with the resulting cake falling badly in after baking, but everyone else thought that it tasted good, so all's well!

Easy Chocolate Fudge Toffees .. or caramels

I have always wanted to make chocolate fudge or chocolate toffees! The difference between fudge and toffees is officially that fudge is softer than toffee, at least that's what the German wikipedia says. I have been using the terms as synonyms...

After reviewing various recipes I decided on this one, which was praised explicitly as very simple (not to say foolproof) and as not requiring a candy thermometer. It worked out just fine, but with the funny volume measurements, I never know exactly at what height exactly I should aim in the measuring cup ... therefore the recipe below is in weight units. Go metric system! ;-)

Reindeer Heart Cookies

Like so much else, I discovered this cute and easy way of decorating cookies on Pinterest. My reindeer are (intentionally) darker than thanks to cocoa in the dough, and I thought a heart shape would be nice - even if that lead some onlookers to mistake the heart-shaped ones for "Reindeer mice" and the jagged ones for "Reindeer hedgehogs"!
If you decorate as many cookies as I did, it takes time despite the simplicity ... but it was worth it, right? And you'll have many cookies to hand out, which is always good. :-) I used the same dough as for the non-lemming Funny cookies .