Jennifer Sheahan: How to make gingerbread, chocolate bark and stuffed meringues

The Home of the Year winner loves fast festive baking. Her she shares three of her favourite super-easy Christmas recipes

Baking items that don't make a mess is always a good idea: Think of recipes where all the ingredients can be mixed all in one bowl. File pictures

Christmas Eve is next weekend, and I’m just not ready. I still don’t have all my presents. Nothing is wrapped. I’m busy at work. And frankly, the last thing I want to do this week is to go shopping for some super complicated recipe that will take me hours to prepare and will leave me with a huge clean-up. Plus some things just taste better on the day they’re baked. With all that in mind, here are some of my favourite easy-peasy baking recipes that you can make with minimal fuss over Christmas.

The following recipes are quick to prepare (20 minutes or less, plus baking time), they don’t make a huge mess (all the ingredients can be mixed in one bowl), and they include common ingredients that you’re likely to have to hand.

GINGERBREAD

Far less controversial than my fondness for Brussels sprouts (I said what I said) is my love of gingerbread. It is the (second) most Christmassy food in my book. I adore the spicy warmth — even better with a dollop of whipped cream, or your frosting of choice. This is my favourite recipe to quickly whip up over Christmas. Plus if you add two pretzels for antlers and a red M&M for a nose, you can turn these into little Rudolphs.

Preheat your oven to 170c (fan). In a large mixing bowl, add 115g (half a cup) of regular salted butter at room temperature and 100g (½ cup) of brown sugar. Beat these with an electric mixer until the texture is creamy and the colour has lightened. Mix in 235g (one cup) of treacle (sometimes called molasses) until well combined. Add in one egg and one teaspoon of vanilla extract, and mix well.

Next, sift in 310g (two and a half cups) of plain flour and one and a half teaspoons of baking soda. Then add the following flavours: one teaspoon of ground cinnamon, one teaspoon of ground ginger, half a teaspoon of ground cloves, half a teaspoon of allspice, and three-quarters teaspoon of salt. (Note that these can be adjusted to your preference — if you don’t like cloves, you can swap for cardamom or add more cinnamon.) 

Mix everything well. Finally, slowly and carefully stir in 235ml (one cup) of freshly boiled water. Pour everything into a lined 20cm x 20cm baking tin and bake for around 40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool, slice, and enjoy.

Try recipes that are quick to prepare and that you can make with minimal fuss over Christmas.

CHOCOLATE BARK

This is so easy it hardly needs a recipe — it doesn’t even require an oven. It can be decorated for Christmas but works equally well for any occasion. All you need is some chocolate and whatever toppings you have lying around.

First, you need to melt around 200g of plain chocolate (any kind, milk or dark, although be warned that white chocolate is tricky to work with). There are two easy ways to do this. The first is to break it into small pieces in a bowl and microwave it in 10-second bursts, stirring gently in between.

The second is to place a bowl over a pot of boiling water and put small pieces of chocolate into the bowl, stirring gently every so often until melted through, then remove from the heat.

Next, pour your chocolate onto a large piece of parchment paper. Finally, sprinkle your toppings on top. My favourite toppings are something salty to mix with the sweetness of the chocolate — for example, pretzels and nuts. 

You could also sprinkle on crushed bits of peppermint canes, marshmallows, popcorn, or jellies — really anything you like, and however much you want. Once you have sprinkled on your toppings, put it all in the fridge to cool.

Give it at least 30 minutes, until it is set. When it’s solid to the touch, you can remove it from the fridge and break it into irregularly shaped pieces. These broken shards look so pretty and can be wrapped in cellophane and tied with a ribbon to give as a gift. Or eat it all yourself, I’m not here to judge.

STUFFED MERINGUES

This one is new to me as of earlier this year — I have had pavlova, and Eton mess, and meringues topped with whatever I’ve had in the fridge as a last-minute dessert, but I’ve never thought to fold additional flavours through the meringue itself until a friend made Donal Skehan’s chocolate and pistachio meringues a few months ago. Truly life-changing.

First, preheat the oven to 150C (fan). Next, make a basic meringue by whipping four egg whites with 250g icing sugar until stiff peaks form. Gently fold in two teaspoons of sifted cornflour and one teaspoon of regular vinegar. (If you don’t have cornflour or vinegar it’s not the end of the world, you can leave them out — they just add extra chewyness to the centre of the meringue.) 

Finally, with a spatula, gently fold in 100g of dark chocolate, chopped into small pieces, and 100g of chopped pistachio nuts. Line two baking trays with baking parchment and dollop the meringue mixture into six equal-sized circles. Bake for 45 minutes. Remove from the oven once done and allow to cool completely before serving.

I love Donal’s chocolate and pistachio mix but you could swap in your own preferred flavours here, like almonds and dried cherries.