Pre-Christmas baking

Christmas is here!!

Started some Christmas baking with English scones and some biscotti. Actually the reason for the scones is that the mini jams are just too cute and very festive. :)

Biscotti is kind of a must and since the recipient of this present mentioned biscotti when I mentioned Christmas present, here's the biscotti. Something more Christmasy so instead of my usual almond chocolate biscotti, I made this with the green and red colour - almond, pistachio, cranberries and raisins. Taster said it's not as crunchy but nice. I supposed the fruits made certain part more moist, I was also being careful not to over bake it in case it got too hard.

Merry Christmas in advance. :)

Scones

I tried the Simon Rimmer's Scones recipe.

I've already have a recipe which I'm happy with actually, and it's my ex-boss' favorite. But I do really want to try this out since it sounds like a great recipe. The difference between this recipe and mine is the sugar content - this one higher. Other than that would be the additional baking powder, I supposed will make the scones lighter.

The amount of raisins I personally think is too much, I suppose about 30gm instead of 55gm. With this amount, you have about 10 raisins in a scones. I don't think we should overload the scones with raisins, firstly it will be too sweet and overpowering the scones, secondly, it's difficult to cut them up if you wish to sandwich butter and jam in the middle.

Finally, I'd used a cutter instead of shaping the scones free-hand today. I still prefer free-hand shaping, it's more manageable, and i like it "taller".

The above were shaped free-hand because it's difficult to cut the remaining dough with cutter towards the end. These below were from the cutter with exact directions of the recipe (rolled dough into 1.5cm thick).

I've no idea if this is a more delicious recipe or not. I might have it for breakfast tomorrow. My taster will try it out for me later.