Oh Friday - how we love you! Friday marks the start of wedding filled weekends or planning checklists and here at Modern Wedding we love both!
Are you still deciding how to thank your wedding guests? A gift from the heart is always meaningful, but a gift made with hands is priceless so we thought we'd bring you these little projects for the weekend. Trial one or all of them to create a DIY wedding gift!
ALMOND SHORTBREAD
1 vanilla bean
½ cup icing sugar mixture
130g butter
1 cup ground almonds
1¼ cups plain flour
One or two days before, make vanilla sugar by putting vanilla bean and icing sugar mixture in a screw top jar for the flavours to blend. To make biscuits, cream butter and vanilla-flavoured icing sugar before adding ground almonds and flour. Take heaped teaspoons of mixture and roll between palms shaping it to taper at the ends making a crescent shape. If mixture sticks to hands use a little extra flour. Bake at 160C for approximately 15 minutes. Don't let them go brown.Cool for ten minutes before rolling in extra vanilla sugar.
CHOCOLATE FRUIT AND NUTS
800g white chocolate
2 cups desiccated coconut
1 cup shelled pistachio nuts
1 cup strawberry-flavoured berries or dried cranberries
Put the chocolate in a large heatproof bowl and place over a saucepan of simmering water. Stir until chocolate is melted and smooth. Remove from heat and stir the coconut, pistachios and berries through. When mixed thoroughly spoon mixture into a 20cm x 30cm tray lined with baking paper and refrigerate for one hour or until set. Remove from tin and cut rounds of chocolate using a 5.5cm scone cutter.
LEMONCELLO TRUFFLES
480g white chocolate
½ cup pouring cream
3 tblspns Lemoncello
Shredded coconut for truffle coating
Place chocolate, cream and Lemoncello in a small heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and stir until the mixture is melted and smooth. Place the melted mixture into a lightly greased bowl and refrigerate for a few hours until set. Take teaspoonfuls of the set mixture and roll into balls before rolling in shredded coconut.
(Rum can be used instead of Lemoncello).
COOKIES WITH A STAMP
Jazz up your favourite shortbread biscuits by stamping the white fondant icing with rubber stamps. Have all your cookies iced before starting the stamping. Rinse and squeeze dry a new sponge before spreading it with black food colour paste. Press the stamp onto the sponge, then onto the white icing with even pressure.
Thanks to Gail MacDiarmid for these yummy recipes. Photography by Jim Smith.
Do you appreciate the time spent on a DIY wedding gift? Or do you really care? Let us know your thoughts - jump onto Facebook or tweet us!
Happy Baking!
Isabel 🙂