Recipe: How to make peppermint creams

Peppermint Creams

This is the easy to follow recipe I used to create the gifts for my bridesmaids.

Makes: 50 approximately 

Ingredients: 

520g Icing sugar (plus extra for rolling out)

1/4 lemon juice

1 tbsp peppermint flavouring

1 egg white

1 small bar of dark chocolate

Greaseproof/baking parchment 

Cutters

Whisk

Scales

Rolling pin

1 large bowl

Tray

Board/work surface 

Watch out - this is messy work! 

Step 1

Crack an egg and put the egg white into a large mixing bowl. This can be done by swapping the yolk between each shell half several times. Be sure not to get any yolk in your bowl. Whisk the whites until stiff. Tip: you should be able to move the bowl side to side without the egg white moving.

Step 2

Measure out the icing sugar, then sieve it into the mixing bowl.

Step 3

Add the peppermint essence and lemon juice. Remove pips if you accidentally get any in your mixture. Whisk gradually until it all comes together. This might take a couple of minutes, but don't be tempted to speed up as this will cause icing sugar to fly everywhere.

Step 4

Put the combined mixture onto a board covered in lots of icing sugar (also sieved). Don't use tour work surface as the icing sugar makes this tricky to clean. If your mixture looks too much like this (above) you need to roll it around in icing sugar until it looks more like this:

Step 5

Coat your rolling pin with a liberal layer of sieved icing sugar and roll out your mixture. You can do this to your preferred thickness, but I think thinner is best so I aim for 25mm, (no, I don't measure it).

Step 6

Cut your shapes - stars and circles work well. Place these on a parchment-lined tin and refrigerate for approximately two hours.

Step 7

Ten minutes before you remove your peppermint creams from the fridge, melt a bar of dark chocolate on a plate over a pan of boiling water. Pour this over your shapes in whatever way you like (but avoid getting chocolate onto the parchment as it's very difficult to extract the peppermint creams if this has happened). Refrigerate again for 30-45 minutes.

Step 8

Wrap a bundle of jolly chocolatey peppermints in pretty tissue paper and put into a gift box. A simple, but thoughtful end delicious present. Alternatively, use this to make your invitations.

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