For some reason or the other, I ended up with two types of those baking box mixes. Since this is the weekend before Christmas, I thought it was a good time for some Christmas baking!

This is what I made! The thumbprint cookie mix was bought… because I’m extremely bad at self-restraint in a Marks & Spencer’s. I don’t know if it’s because this time last year I was in England and hence, am in a nostalgic mood now, but I can walk in to M&S intending only to get a meal deal and walk out with chips and cookie mix and actual cookies.

The brownie set was bought because I thought it was cute. Although I really should have looked closer at the box because:

FROSTING IS NOT INCLUDED.

In which case, the mix was definitely overpriced, even though it was on sale. The supermarket didn’t have green frosting (or food colouring) either, so we got yellow and blue and hoped they could mix.

Salted Caramel & Milk Chocolate Thumbprint Cookie

I decided to make the cookies first because they seemed pretty easy! All you need is about 150g of butter and that’s it. I mixed the butter and cookie mix together until they became a dough and then formed the cookies.

My cookies just before they went into the oven. I didn’t think they’d expand because I only added butter, bu the thumbprints disappeared halfway through the baking process! I had to manually “re-add” them in using a small spoon.

These took way longer than I expected to bake, but that was due to me using the wrong oven setting. And this is why I don’t really make things from scratch – the only thing I’ve made from scratch this year were scones.

And this is the final product! I couldn’t get the chocolate to melt properly in the plastic packet, so I ended up opening it and using the bowl in a bigger bowl full of hot water method. That did the trick but it made the drizzling a lot harder. Plus, the melted chocolate doesn’t ‘flow’ very well.

Christmas Brownies

After I finished the cookies, I tackled the brownies. Unlike other brownie mixes (like Betty Crocker), this one requires you to mix butter and eggs into the mix, which means a lot more arm strength was needed. The resulting amount of brownie wasn’t that much either.

After that, I had to make the green icing. Luckily, things turned out fine.

My brother also arrived around this time, so we ended up decorating the brownies together! Despite the difference in ages, we’re equally (un)talented so the trees looked the same.

I’m not very impressed with the brownie box set because the decorations only had two things: the red sprinkles and green Christmas trees. In a way, it’s a good thing they didn’t include frosting, because that meant that we had two more things to use – blue and yellow frosting. We also got a huge bag of mini marshmallows and managed to use a little bit of that.

Apart from Christmas trees, I tried to make a Silent Night scene, while my brother decided to make the sheep at night (there was no space for the shepherds keeping watch).

I also tried making a 3D tree, mostly because I saw something like this on Pinterest years ago and always wanted to try it. My brother and I agreed that we are ready to be on Nailed It (we’ve been watching the holiday specials). We probably won’t win, but we are about the same level as some of the contestants.

Taste test!

Obviously if I bake, I need to try them. And what better drink than a Christmas tea?

The cookies were great. They’re very buttery and chocolatey and the salted caramel went perfectly with it. The tea was Cache Cache, one of the Lupicia Christmas black teas and I really liked the pairing. I would have liked to try all different teas with these, but my family would probably not let me have six cups (let alone six pots) of tea in one sitting. That said, I did manage to finish trying them over the past week so I’ll be able to review them before Christmas! I’m thinking Christmas Eve might be a good time?

I was surprisingly impressed with the brownie too. It’s quite moist and it was a good base for all the frosting and marshmallows and sprinkles that we piled on it.

While I can’t bring the brownies out without ruining the frosting, I will definitely be bringing the cookies to Church tomorrow, along with my Christmas presents. Yay for the Christmas spirit!