peppermint creams

A break in the clouds so we spent a lovely afternoon picking fruit on the allotment with some very lovely friends and then a visit to the park to burn off some energy.

But not before making our Peppermint Creams!

The icing sugar had been sat with chocolate mint leaves in for a few days and was ready to be turned into Mummy's favourite sweeties.

 (Thorntons Sweet Shop do a fantastic mint cream sweet which I manage to get Santa to bring every Christmas, I really must be on the good list)

After whipping up 1 egg white until it was frothyy (not stiff) we added it to a bowl of the sifted icing sugar (12oz) and stirred bit by bit until the mixture turned stiff and dough like. We added  2 drops of peppermint essence in case our leaves hadn't done the job (better safe than sorry)

We split the mixture leaving one half white and rolled it out into a sausage shape and cut into slices. Each slice was carefully pressed into a flatter disc shape.

Jacob added a green food colouring to the other half of the mixture, rolled it and sliced it.

The tiniest amount of colouring was needed, from this bowl about 4 drops were used

And there we are - Peppermint Creams. Put into the fridge to set, 24hours is advised but of course tasting at various stages of setting is the norm in this house i.e. just before they go into the fridge, half hour later and again after a couple of hours.

This was not the end of the Peppermint Creams however!

After returning from the park we added a little extra to the sweets

CHOCOLATE xxxxxxxxx

Now that looks so much better doesn't it!

And the first tasting after a couple of hours in the fridge

I think Christmas presents this year may well be Peppermint Creams, Plum Jam and shortbread 'jammy' biscuits, all hand made of course. I'm just a bit worried that the sweets won't make it past the front door!

I'm making Apple and Plum Jam at some point this week, any good recipes anyone?