Christmas Teacakes

Good Morning and welcome to todays first post of many food/food photo based postings over the next few days - Teacakes: Round 2.  Last year I was overwhelmed with the response to these:

...and they are still proving just as popular this year - I love seeing your creations, so thank you for your shares and letting me see them.  I've been dying to since last December - Let's make some more?

Today, I present a little insight in to my head at 8pm on a Thursday night with a request for Christmas-y treats for the next day, continuing my teacake Christmas obsession to it’s maximum with more ideas to turn them in to quick and easy festive treats, using nothing more than a few icing pens and rolled icing.

Norman the Robin: Naming your food isn’t crazy and if you buy a pack of 10 teacakes, you have a whole flock to name.  To create his redbreast, I added a few drops of red food colouring to a tablespoons worth of Regal Roll Icing [though you can buy red roll icing pre-made] and flattened to a thin with a rolling pin.

The colouring may take a bit of work to incorporate and the icing may become warm - pop in the fridge to cool down if you need to and add a little icing sugar if it becomes sticky. 

With a 48mm cookie cutter, I created my round, added a little water with my finger to the underside and placed over half of the teacake.  Smooth out the icing and trim the bottom if you need to.  

I'll just let your eyes, rather than my camera, focus for this one.

You could also make the redbreast with red chocolate [Wiltons is always a good choice] or red icing pens.  Next, I added the eyes and beak with icing pens, for speed and because I had them readily available.  If you buy a pack of coloured roll icing, you could also cut the features from some black and yellow roll icing.

This then led me to create a little penguin, replacing the redbreast with a white, slightly more narrow one, cut with a knife and then smoothed at the edges once in place:

…..it’s a brown penguin…..I’m sure they exist.

Rudolph Reindeer:  My favourite I think.  Using the same red roll icing as the robin, I cut a small circle using a piping nozzle top as a cutter for his nose:

 A little water to the underside fixed it in place and two eyes were made from a black icing pen:  

The effort in the reindeer came from the chocolate antlers.  Pretzels have been used in the examples I could find on Pinterest, but as I am a chocoholic, I made mine using some Wilton melted chocolate drops, popped in the microwave for 20 seconds and then used a small spoon to draw antlers on to grease proof paper:

It might take some practice, but you can then create any design you fancy – just make them fairly thick so that they stand and leave a length at the bottoms that you can then poke into the teacake.  Leave to set [speed along in the fridge if you need] and then remove carefully from the paper, adding them to the top of the teacake - use a skewer or handle end of a spoon to make this easier and add a little icing to make them sturdy if you need to:  

If you make a whole set of reindeer, you can replace the red nose with a brown one for the others.

I also created a little gingerbread man, the simplest and easiest of them all….

....not sure I’ve got away with it though [unless you let my brown penguin pass earlier?]

I think the change in his smile says it all.

You could also create Frosty the Snowman - cover the top in white chocolate and then add the features of a carrot nose and pebble eyes and mouth with icing pens, baubles and presents – add patterns with icing pens and add sprinkles for decoration..... or go the whole hog and create Santas face, or just add Christmas sprinkles to the tops – I really could go on and probably will each year as my obsession with them only seems to grow.  But you can’t beat a teacake, so long may it continue.

And so I leave you with what I think is my ultimate Chirstmas-ification of the already perfect teacake.  Surely there are no more to be made….let’s see Christmas 2014.

As always - please do link me to any of your attempts through your blog, twitter, instagram 

or pinterest - I love seeing them! 

See you tomorrow for cupcakes and cake pops x
Here's a sneak peek: