Festive Baking – Ginger Cheesecake Truffles

Baking at Christmas time is one of my favourite things to do. Nothing makes me feel more festive than gingerbread which is my staple Christmas treat.

So when I watched Zoella’s easy festive treats video and saw these Ginger Cheesecake Truffles I could not resist trying them out! They are super easy to make, really quick and they taste absolutely delicious.

I made these for my secret santa exchange with the girls and they went down an absolute treat! I also made gingerbread and festive ginger drinks and bought some gingerbread latte popcorn from Aldi!

Ginger Cheesecake Truffles

To make these you will need:

• one pack of ginger biscuits
• cream cheese (Philadelphia or own brand, one small tub will do)
• melted chocolate – I used one and a half bars of own brand white chocolate and half a terrys chocolate orange
• toppings – I used own brand gold sprinkles and Terrys chocolate orange and red and green icing pens
• tooth picks

To start off you will need to crush the biscuits. Zoella used a Nutriblender but I don’t have such an amazing blender so I popped them in a sandwich bag and bashed them with a rolling pin until they were all small bits.

Pop them in the bowl and add the cream cheese. You don’t want to make these too wet with the cheese so add in half and mix it around with your hands and add more cheese until you reach the desired consistency.

Then mould them into little balls using your hands. Zoella advised “generously mouth sized” so you can either pop it all in at once or bite it into two, however the size I made them they take 4 bits to eat!

Pop them onto a plate/in a box (I used a takeaway box) and place them in the freezer for 30 minutes.

When this time is up, take them out the freezer and pop the tooth picks into the balls (we didn’t have any tooth pick so improvised and used skewers!)

Melt your chocolate. I did this in the microwave in 10 second bursts and stir in between – be careful not to leave it for longer as you will burn it.

Dip your cheesecake balls into the chocolate and roll them round until covered all over. Pop them onto a plate and remove the tooth pick, covering the hole over with the chocolate using a spoon.

You will want to decorate each one straight away before the chocolate sets. I used gold sprinkles or grated Terrys Chocolate orange for the white chocolate coated balls and for a couple of the ones covered in the chocolate orange we popped white chocolate on top and Jay very carefully drew a little holly on top to make it look like a Christmas pudding!

And voila there you have your easy festive Ginger Cheesecake Truffles!

Gingerbread Men

For these I used a recipe from BBC Food which requires a food blender. You will need:

• • 350g/12oz plain flour, plus extra for rolling out

• • 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

• • 2 tsp ground ginger

• • 1 tsp ground cinnamon

• • 125g/4½oz butter

• • 175g/6oz light soft brown sugar

• • 1 free-range egg

• 4 tbsp golden syrup

1. 1. Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger and cinnamon and pour into the bowl of a food processor. Add the butter and blend until the mix looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar.

1. 1. Lightly beat the egg and golden syrup together, add to the food processor and pulse until the mixture clumps together. Tip the dough out, knead briefly until smooth, wrap in clingfim and leave to chill in the fridge for 15 minutes.

1. 1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper.

1. 1. Roll the dough out to a 0.5cm/¼in thickness on a lightly floured surface. Using cutters, cut out the gingerbread men shapes and place on the baking tray, leaving a gap between them.

1. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until lightly golden-brown. Leave on the tray for 10 minutes and then move to a wire rack to finish cooling. When cooled decorate with the writing icing and cake decorations.

These came out much larger than their original size so we trimmed them down by cutting them out with the cutters again to straighten the edges for better decorating.

Festive Ginger Beer

Another Zoella inspired drink, you mix half cranberry juice with half ginger ale for a festive fizzy ginger tipple.

Have you tried any of these festive treats? What do you like to bake at Christmas? I’d love to know below!

Thanks for reading