“One Tin Bakes” author and pastry chef Edd Kimber joined "Good Morning America" with a delicious holiday dessert for our 12 days of Christmas cookies.
"The Great British Bake Off" winner's sweet treat is a ginger sandwich cookie filled with caramelized white chocolate ganache and topped with edible gold luster powder. They're also shaped into rings to represent "five gold rings" from "The 12 Days of Christmas" classic Christmas carol.
Get his recipe below.
MORE: GMA 25 Days of CookiesYield: About 30 sandwich cookies
Ingredients for ginger sandwich cookies
2/3 cup (150g) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup (120g) icing sugar
2 medium egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
2 cups (250g) all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2/3 cup (80g) finely diced candied or crystallized ginger
Directions
Place the butter and sugar in the bowl of a food processor and processor until the mixture is soft and creamy. Add the egg yolks and vanilla and pulse until they disappear into the dough. Add the flour, salt and ginger and pulse a few times just until the dough starts to clump, try not to pulse until a ball of dough is formed because this can make the dough tough.
Tip out the cookie dough and use your hands to briefly bring together as a uniform dough. Cut the dough into two pieces and wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, at least a couple hours.
On a lightly floured work surface roll out one piece of the dough until about 5 millimeters thick, cut out rounds 2 inches in diameter. Place the cookies onto a parchment-lined sheet pan. Chill for 20-30 mins until the dough is firm.
Meanwhile, repeat the rolling out of the second piece of dough and cut out as before, placing on a second sheet pan.
Use a 1-inch cookie cutter to cut out a hole from the second batch of cookies to form rings. Chill as before. Gather the scraps of dough together and briefly knead to make a uniform dough. Chill and use it to make more cookies.
Bake on the middle shelf for about 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned. The ring cookies will bake faster, so start checking those after 8 minutes. Remove the trays and allow the cookies to cool for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
9 ounces (255 grams) caramelized white chocolate
1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon (95 milligrams) double cream
Pinch of salt
Directions
Scatter the chocolate over a sheet pan, making sure it's a pan with a rim. Bake the chocolate at 250 degrees Fahrenheit (120 degrees Celsius) for about 60-90 minutes until golden. Every 10-15 minutes, you need to take the chocolate out of the oven and give the whole thing a thorough scrape and stir.
Whilst baking, the chocolate can thicken and seem a little grainy or coarse. Every time you remove the chocolate from the oven, you need to spread it around and scrape the bottom of the pan enough so that the chocolate smooths out again.
Once the chocolate has the color of caramel, scrape it into a bowl and set it aside to cool. This can be made weeks in advance.
To make the filling, roughly chop the chocolate and place into a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Stir occasionally until fully melted.
Meanwhile, place the cream into a small pan and bring to a simmer. Pour the cream over the chocolate in three additions, to form a silky smooth ganache. Set aside until thickened.
Assembly
Spoon or pipe a small mound of ganache onto the disc cookies and sandwich together with a ring cookie.
If you want a little more glamour for the holidays you can make the cookies sparkle!
What you'll need:
Edible gold lustre powder
Vodka
Directions
Take a teaspoon of edible gold lustre powder and mix with just enough vodka to make a smooth liquid.
Paint the cookies with this mixture. The alcohol is there to enable it to stick to the cookies, but it will evaporate away, leaving just the color.
If you don't want to use the luster you can make a little extra caramelized white chocolate and drizzle over the cookies or keep it super simple and dust the ring cookies with icing sugar before assembling.
Kept in a sealed container these will keep for a couple days.
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