12 Weeks of Christmas Cookies, Week #11 – Santa’s Hats Cookies

Christmas is hitting upon us like a bullet train. I cant believe that this is already week 11 of 12 WOCC!

One more week to go. Sigh, i am definitely gonna miss this. I’ve been looking forward to Fridays ever since 12 WOCC started, just because i can watch the panel of thumbnail shots of what other bloggers did. The panel will start with just a few entries, and as the day progresses, so will the number of thumbnails. I love hitting the ‘refresh’ button after every few hours or so to check out for new entries. Yes, i am definitely gonna miss that.

And having said that, i would like to thank Abby for organizing such a wonderful event!

Anyhoo, for week #11, i made these Santa’s hats

I have been visualizing this for quite a number of weeks, but i wasn’t sure whether it would work. These hats are made of red, cone shaped choux pastry. And i was really doubting on whether it was even possible to make red, cone shaped choux pastry. There are too many unaddressed technicalities, like whether the choux pastry will puff, the way they usually do and lose that cone shape. Or whether the dough will slide down the wafer cone i used as the pastry was baking. Confused yet?

Let me do a brief run on what i visualized, which fortunately did materialize. LOl

As mentioned, the santa’s hats are actually made of red choux pastry dough, which i have piped around a wafer cone.

I got these wafer cones from a local baking supply shop. They are meant to pipe buttercream roses on.  Basically, you are supposed to pipe roses on them and transfer the whole thing (wafer+rose) onto your cakes. They are just tasteless edible wafer which come in multi colour.

So anyways, once piped, i sent them to bake and got these:

Yes! it worked! Although the dough did puff somewhat, they did manage to retain its shape, and nope, the dough didn’t slide down the wafer cones as it was baking. In fact it stuck to the wafer cone quite a bit, so u have to gently kinda ease the cones out of the choux shells.

Okays, now that the difficult part is done, so what of these crispy shells now?

We pipe them with white chocolate mousse of course! The same mousse i piped on those chocolate cups last week. U can just pipe into the hollow, or you can pipe into the hollow AND the sides. Piping around the mouth of the choux pastry shell will give u that extra ruffle in the eventual cookies.

Next, comes the base

I needed an untainted white base for these hats, and what better recipe to follow than that tapioca floured cookie recipe i used for my Albino Gingerbread men? 🙂

We then attach the filled and piped cookies onto that pristine white bases

Oh, a word of advise, fill, pipe cookies and attach them to their designated bases just before serving though. Both cookie base and the choux pastry will get soggy quite quickly. But having said that, you can definitely make the cookies and the mousse in advance,  and refrigerate and assemble them when they are ready to be eaten.

Oh, and don’t forget to pipe that mini fluff of a ball on the tips of these cookies

Santa’s Hat Cookies all good to go!

Choux Pastry Recipe

(Taken from an Indonesian cookbook, please bear the pathetic translation!)

100 gram butter

200 ml water

1/4 tsp salt

125 grams AP flour

180 grams egg, beaten lightly

A few drops of red colouring

1. Heat the butter, water, red colouring and salt till they come to a rolling boil.

2. Remove from heat and immediately dump in all the flour. Mix well and return to fire still mixing till the dough dries out. Remove from heat and let cool

3. Beat the eggs into the dough gradually, mix till they are well combined.

4. Spoon dough into a pipping bag, and pipe around the wafer cones.

5. Bake at 375 for 30 minutes, or till they are dry.

Chocolate Mousse Recipe

For the white chocolate mousse:

150 gr white chocolate

150 gr heavy cream

1. In a double boiler, melt white chocolate till smooth, set aside to cool to room temp.

2. In another larger bowl, beat heavy cream till soft peaks. Drizzle in melted white chocolate and beat till you have a thick, pipping consistency.

White Cookie Base Recipe:

Recipe adapted from Little Corner of Mine (Thanks for sharing!)

Ingredients:

-2 1/2 cups tapioca flour/tapioca starch
-1 Tbp. butter, melted
-1 egg yolk (from large egg)
-1 cup icing sugar
-120ml thick coconut milk (or coconut cream)

Method:

1. Place a paper towel on a microwave safed bowl, add the tapioca flour and microwave for 1 minute. Set aside and let it cool. (You can fry the flour in the wok if you don’t have a microwave.)

Microwave extra tapioca flour for standby (to flour the surface) and kneading purposes.

2. Sift tapioca flour and icing sugar in a big bowl. Add melted butter, yolk & coconut milk. Knead until the dough is pliable. (If the dough is wet or soft, add more tapioca flour, 1 Tbp. at a time and knead until it becomes a harder dough. Likewise, if it’s too dry, add more coconut milk).

3. Roll out the dough on lightly floured surface to about 3mm thickness. Cut into shapes with a cookie cutter*. Arrange on lined baking tray and bake at 350′F for 15 minutes. It will puff when baked.

*Note: i used a circular cookie cutter.