Christmas recipes

My fiance and I love cooking, and at Christmas we particularly like to give food as a gift to members of our family. This recipe was the gift we gave last year, and it proved exceedingly popular, which was so brilliant as it was quick and easy!

Ingredients

150g milk or plain chocolate
50g dried sweetened cranberries
50g shelled pistachio nuts
500g pack marzipan
50g white chocolate
icing sugar to dust

Directions

*Finely chop 50g of milk/plain chocolate with the cranberries and nuts - save a few pieces of nuts and berries to decorate.

*Dust a work surface with icing sugar, roll the marzipan into a 23x33cm rectangle and cut it into four equal pieces.

*Sprinkle the chopped chocolate and nut mixture over each piece and then roll them up tightly to make log shapes.

* Melt the remaining milk/plain chocolate, spread it over the logs and leave it in a cool place to set.

*Melt the white chocolate, drizzle it over the logs and decorate them with the remaining pistachio and cranberry pieces.

*Leave them to cool and cut into slices.

Serving

You could easily just put these chunks out on a plate when you have guests over, but we did things slightly differently.

We cut two equal sized squares of baking paper and wrapping paper, and stuck them together. We placed a few of the pieces in the middle of the paper, pulled all the sides up around the top of them, and secured it with an elastic band. We then covered the elastic band with decorative ribbon and attached a label to each with the recipients name on them.

We kept the little parcels in the fridge before giving them to our family on Christmas Day.

I would say these will last a week kept in the fridge, but to be totally honest with you none of the recipients kept them for any longer than a couple of days!