Some Christmas treats

In addition to writing Christmas cards and making paper chains, Sunday was a day for making sweets.

My mother and aunt are in town this week and will be visiting us, which calls for us to have something sweet on hand to offer our guests. It is also my last week at work before breaking for Christmas, meaning I need to take in some sort of confection.

I chose peppermint creams for the latter because they are so easy to make.

Peppermint creams, intended for work colleagues.

These are a tried and tested recipe based on this one, but I decided to do star shapes this time around.
Two egg whites and about a box and a half of icing sugar yielded a lot of mints.

Supermarkets do not sell suitable peppermint extract only heavily diluted 'essence', so we bought ours from Holland and Barratt.

No baking required here, but the mints need to be either refrigerated or put in the freezer to set both the fondant and chocolate.

M helped with rolling, cutting and placing on trays.

I made festive rice krispie treats in readiness for our visitors.

Festive rice krispie treats.

I melted 320g of marshmallows together with 150g of butter and 3 tablespoons of cocoa. The marshmallow mixture is added to 7 mugs of rice pops and mixed with a wooden spoon.

The krispie mix is shaped into balls, then a teaspoon of melted white chocolate is poured over the top. The krispie treat is finished with a red M&M.

M helped here as well, but not as much as she'd have liked as I was well aware how much chocolate and sugar she'd consumed by this point!