Hello everybody!

Now that we are getting fully immersed into the Christmas spirit, we want to get you feeling festive too! We have decided to make for you 3 delicious different types of hot chocolate each with their own tiny gingerbread biscuit! Three PERFECT drinks for cosying by a warm fire, watching Christmas films. 

We have a divine Red Velvet Hot Chocolate, a festive Gingerbread Hot Chocolate and a beautiful Amaretto and Orange Hot Chocolate, all topped with cream and an adorable gingerbread biscuit! Seriously, how ridiculously cute are the little houses?!

Let's start by making the mini gingerbread men, trees and adorable tiny houses. These are quick and easy (with a bit more of time needed to build the houses), super fun to decorate and they make any hot drink absolutely beautiful! We used the gingerbread recipe from Tanya Bakes but halved the ingredients (and still had too much). Below are the measurements that we used, but you can always make more or less if you want to...

Ingredients:

75g unsalted butter, softened

75g dark muscovado sugar

1 egg

1 1/2 tbsp golden syrup

200g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground ginger

For the icing...

8oz icing sugar

1 tsp lemon juice

1 egg white

Preheat your oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4, and line two baking trays with greaseproof paper.

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs and golden syrup and combine well, then mix in the flour, baking powder and spices to make a smooth dough.

Roll out the dough onto a floured surface to about 3-4mm thick. Cut out with Christmas cookie cutters of your choice. We made ourselves a simple template for the house but you can easily find one on the Internet or create your own; ours were about 4cm tall and 3cm wide. Keep going until you have used up all of the dough, arranging them onto the baking trays as you go.

Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool completely. 

To build the houses and decorate the biscuits we made a royal icing so that it would dry hard. To do this start by whisking the egg white until frothy, then add in the lemon juice. One spoon at a time, sieve and fold in the icing sugar. Once it is all mixed in, beat the icing to make sure there are no bubbles. Transfer this into a piping bag and cut a small hole in the end of the piping bag. 

Decorate the gingerbread, however you would like, this is the time to get your creativity flowing. After the icing is set (or before if you can't wait), your biscuits are ready to be eaten alongside a delicious hot chocolate, or on their own if your prefer!

These biscuits are delicious on their own or with one of these delicious hot chocolates...

For the divine Red Velvet Hot Chocolate...

Ingredients:

1 cup of milk 

50g dark chocolate

1 tsp vanilla 

red food colouring

Heat the milk in a saucepan over a medium heat. Once it starts to simmer, take it off the heat, and whisk in your chocolate chunks until smooth. Add your vanilla and red food colouring and stir well. Pour into your cup, top with squirty/whipped cream, dust with cocoa powder and serve with a cute little gingerbread tree!

Ingredients:

1 cup milk

50g dark chocolate

gingerbread syrup

Gingerbread Syrup...

150g caster sugar

100ml water

1/2 tbsp ground ginger

1 cinnamon stick

We love this gingerbread syrup and it can add a festive flavour to any drink or dessert.

To make the syrup, start by putting the caster sugar, water, ground ginger and cinnamon stick into a saucepan. Gently bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes until the sugar has dissolved. 

For the hot chocolate, heat the milk in a saucepan on a medium heat, until it starts to simmer. Then add in the dark chocolate and whisk until smooth and combined. Add in the gingerbread syrup to taste. Pour into your cup, and decorate with squirty/whipped cream, dust with cocoa powder and ginger, and top with your homemade gingerbread men.

For the beautiful Amaretto and Orange Hot Chocolate... 

Ingredients:

1 cup milk

zest of 1 orange

juice of 1 orange

50g dark chocolate

amaretto

Heat the milk, orange zest and orange juice together in saucepan over a medium heat until simmering. Remove from the heat and pass through a sieve into a jug. Add the chunks of chocolate and whisk until the chocolate has melted. The amaretto is optional but if you love amaretto like we do, then go right ahead and add to taste. Pour into your mug of choice, and serve with squirty/whipped cream, a dusting of cocoa powder and an adorable little gingerbread house.

All of our drinks are full of flavour, fun, and smooth delicious chocolate! We are insanely in love with the mini houses, and think that they would look adorable on the side of any hot drink, even a cup of tea! The red velvet is so exciting looking and tastes just like red velvet cake! The orange hot chocolate is as delicious as it sounds, but we think it could maybe be even better if you used chocolate orange instead of dark chocolate. Maybe we will try that out and give you an update!

The gingerbread biscuits are so quick and easy to make, and we had so much fun decorating them! They are perfect with or without a hot drink, and are definitely a quick fire way to impress your friends.

Thank you so much for reading this post, 

we really hope you enjoyed it and that it has given you a few ideas for delicious hot chocolates this Christmas!

What is your favourite flavour of hot chocolate? 

A few other ideas we had for flavours were salted caramel, Nutella, white chocolate and peppermint or black forest, so please let us know if you make any of these or the above hot chocolates by tagging us on any of our social media!

Please follow us on Bloglovin', Instagram and like our Facebook page 'Sharkett Sisters', if you want to see more of us, and see what we are up to! 

(All social media links are at the top of the page or in a box to the side!)

And please check out our updated Pinterest profile for lots of gorgeous ideas and maybe some sneak peeks of what we're planning!

See you soon,

 Even though we religiously watch Tanyas videos on YouTube, we still make sure to keep up-to-date with her blog posts too. It is full of gorgeous photographs of style, baking and everything you could wish for, and we absolutely love the layout!

Can we first just say how much we love that Zoe is completely in love with all things Christmas and how excited we are by the snow floating down the page, the string of Christmas lights across the top and the cute little Father Christmas that flies across the page! The posts are all super incredibly gorgeous and full of lovely and exciting styles, foods, beauty products and places. This is definitely a blog you could spend hours and hours reading cosied up with a cup of tea (even if you've read them before)!

 We're pretty new to this blog but after coming across her beautiful Instagram profile, we just had to check out her blog! This is the perfect place to find extremely gorgeous style in both affordable and luxury, and some very helpful tips in the skin care department along with some super pretty imagery.

 This is a blog we visit time and time again for amazing DIY ideas. Unlike quite a few DIY blogs, the DIYs on here are both beautiful and useful. You definitely need to check this blog out, but just so you know, you will probably be scrolling for hours!

This is more of a shop than a blog but they do have amazing recipes and divine food photographs galore! If you love dreamy and delicious cakes and meringues then you definitely need to follow them on Instagram and Facebook!

 If you haven't already, you need to follow Victoria on every form of social media going! She is one the most gorgeous (that hair!!), fun and down to earth people that we have ever seen! Her blog is the perfect place for any lover of travel, fashion, beauty or food. It is one of the most beautiful blogs we follow, and we follow a lot of beautiful ones! Make sure to head over to Inthefrow now to check out her 7 days of Christmas giveaways and enter to have a chance of winning amazing prices every Sunday and Wednesday before Christmas!

 Covering a range of topics from fashion to health and fitness, Lydias blog is one of the most luxurious blogs we follow. With her gorgeous style, perfectly curled hair and beautiful imagery, we can't take our eyes of this blog. And even though we rarely afford any of the pieces in her wardrobe; a girl can dream hey?

 This is a new blog to our collection of favourites, but oh wow, it's beautiful!

Prosecco & Plaid is a fashion, travel and lifestyle blog made of dreams. There are some unbelievably beautiful posts on here and we're definitely going to be making our way backwards through ALL of Jess' posts!

 Emtalks is a blog where Em talks about her love for beauty, fashion, travel and fitness. This is one of our favourite blogs to actually READ and not just scroll through the amazing pictures. Em is an inspiration to all upcoming bloggers and young girls and another blogger we love to follow on every social media. Em is also the founder of LVNDR, which we have mentioned quite a few times (e.g. here) for their gorgeous, unique jewellery. How she finished University while blogging and running LVNDR is beyond me, I struggled without a business on the side!

We Are Twinset is a fashion & lifestyle blog founded by Sarah Ellis & Philippa Bloom, who are two stylists with the most beautiful and classic style! This blog is the perfect place to find what to buy, where to buy it and how to wear it. We love it!

Thank you so much for reading this post!

As we said before, these are not the only blogs we read, but definitely some of our favourites!

Happy December!

Ginger cake is something that we love to make (and eat!) all year round! But ginger is a flavour loved by all particularly around Christmas time in the form of cakes, biscuits and lattes. 

This is another family recipe that we're not quite sure where it came from, but was probably found in a Good Food magazine. It's a sticky and spicy ginger sponge with a gorgeous lemon buttercream. We usually make this as a whole cake; two layers of sponge (around 8 inches) with buttercream in the middle and just a dusting of icing sugar on top. Using the exact same recipe we have made 6 little cakes with some crumbs left over for a delicious ginger cake jar.

Here is how to make them...

Ingredients: 

For the cake...
2 1/2oz sugar
2 1/2oz oil
6oz golden syrup
6oz hot water
1 egg
2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp mixed spice
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
8oz self-raising flour

For the buttercream...
juice of 1 lemon
2oz butter
11oz icing sugar

Preheat your oven to 170°C/150°C Fan/Gas Mark 3, and line a square or rectangular tin with greaseproof paper (we used a 12x8 inch tin).

Making the sponge is really quick and easy!

Start by mixing together the oil, sugar, golden syrup, hot water, egg and spices. Then add in the self-raising flour and bicarbonate of soda and combine to make a smooth batter. 

Pour your mixture into your lined baking tin, and pop into the oven for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Once out the oven, transfer the sponge to a cooling tray and leave to cool.

Using a circular cutter, cut circles from your sponge. (We made 12.) You will want to try and get as many out as possible without leaving too much leftover but remember that you will need an even number! And we have a fun way to use up your leftover crumbs so make sure to scroll right to the end!

To make the buttercream, beat together the butter, icing sugar and lemon juice. If you need to thicken the buttercream, just keep adding more icing sugar.

You can fill the cakes with buttercream however you like. We chose to pipe ours swirling from the inside out so that it would look super pretty from the outside! Pipe 6 of the cakes and them pop the other 6 on top.

We chose to mix up our decoration and have some with buttercream and some without. For the ones with buttercream, we piped as before and then sprinkled some little gold edible stars on top. It would also be very cute to use little gingerbread man sprinkles.

For the ones with dusted with icing sugar we made a star template to make them a little more festive. You could make a template in any shape you want like little Christmas trees or stars or literally anything.

We absolutely love this ginger cake! The cake itself is a gorgeous sticky, spicy, ginger cake and paired with the zingy lemon buttercream, it is divine! The cake is even better the next day because it gets even more sticky and tastes even more yummy. 

Thank you so much for reading our post!

We really hope you've had a fab start to December and that you are starting to feel Christmassy already, we certainly are!

What are your favourite treats to eat on the run up to Christmas? 

Please leave a comment letting us know what you think of the recipe or if you have tried it!

Please follow us on Bloglovin', Instagram and like our Facebook page 'Sharkett Sisters', to see a bit more of what we are up to and make sure you never miss a post!

See you soon, 

Love, Antonia and Imogen x