Christmas bauble made from recycled Christmas cards

Christmas tree bauble from last year’s Christmas cards

I came across this lovely idea for making use of old Christmas cards in an old Country Living magazine of December 2007. In 5 years I have made just one because they are phenomenally time consuming, although to their credit they do require a lot of Christmas cards for each bauble, especially if you ‘fussy cut’ them (that is you cut out the pieces taking care to place centrally the bit of picture/pattern you want to be visible).  

Instructions for making bauble: (8cm in diameter) 

From a pile of old Christmas cards, cut 21 circles (mine were 4 cm in diameter).

On one circle make an equilateral triangle with each apex on the edge of the circle. (Use a compass, adjusting it until you have made 3 marks for each point of the triangle.) Then cut out the triangle which you will use as a template to draw round on all the other circles (on the non decorative side of the card). Fold along the lines. I found the card easier to fold if I scored the lines firmly with a ruler and a very sharp pencil and scoring 60 lines is one reason it took me so long. Now glue the flaps of 5 circles together so the joints meet like a star. This is the top. Repeat the process for the bottom. The remaining 10 circles should be glued to form a long line whose ends can then be glued together to form the middle. At this point you might want to push a knotted ribbon or piece of string through the top of the star as it’s difficult to do when the whole thing is assembled. Now glue middle to top and bottom.

Little bulldog clips or the sort of tiny clothes pegs which have springs are very useful to hold the edges you’ve just glued. If you get too ambitious about the gluing and do too many at one go, the first ones tend to come unstuck. So, take your time. In all I think this one took me about 2 hours!

I have thought about going over all the edges with a gold pen. But enough is enough.

Photograph of recycled card Christmas bauble as shown in Country Living magazine December 2007

If you have children who like making things, this might be a good after Christmas/before going back to school activity  with the bonus that  the prettiest bits of this year’s cards find themselves reappearing on next year’s tree. If, however, you find yourself sitting into the small hours trying to make something of the sad remnants of badly cut out, randomly stuck, unattractive morsels of card abandoned by your children, give up and consign the lot to the recylcing bin. 

 

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Kipferl

Kipferl are one of my favourite biscuits – well almost anything with finely ground nuts is a winner for me. Traditionally this is the right time of year to eat them and like many of the best Christmas sweetmeats they have a Viennese origin. I used to buy  these delicious treats in packets with a German brand name which I can now no longer remember but I haven’t seen them for years.* So, I thought I’d better try to master making them myself and there could be no better guinea pigs than fellow churchgoers after the 9.30 service this morning. 

Kipferl biscuits

Ingredients

125 g ground almonds

60 g icing sugar (plus extra for dusting)

115 g unsalted butter (chilled and diced)

2-3 drops pure almond extract

100 g plain flour

Have ready a couple of good-sized baking trays.

Put the almonds and icing sugar in a bowl. Add the diced butter, almond extract and  flour and mix until the crumbly mixture starts to clump and form a ball. (I think the recipe I used intended me to use a food processor and as I don’t have one it took rather a long time for me to get to this stage with my electric hand whisk – but I did get there.) Gather the ball of dough up, wrap it in cling film and chill for 20 minutes or more.

Remove the ball of dough from the fridge and open up the cling film. Now break off little pieces. Roll into about 30 sausages about 5 cms long which you then curve into crescent shapes and put on a greased baking sheet. 

Place tray in an oven pre-heated to 160 degrees C (325 degrees F) for about 10 minutes (keeping a careful eye on them as they can burn very quickly),

Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack. Shake icing sugar over.

Half way through Morning Prayer we had a power cut. We continued the service singing the hymns unaccompanied and with human candle bearers to help those reading the lesson. Most bewailed was the lack of hot coffee after the service and in this mood everyone fell upon the kipferl with delight and a complete lack of criticism. A couple of us went so far as to find them a bit ‘short’ and I wondered about adding an egg, or at least an egg white next time. Since this morning I’ve looked at various other recipes on the internet and have discovered others use an egg yolk. I shall try that and I think I might go for ground hazelnuts next time.

* I’ve just discovered them on Amazon, produced by Bahlsen. But it really doesn’t feel right to buy biscuits, however delicious, on Amazon, so I’ll carry on experimenting for the time being. 

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