Santa Strawberries!

Ingredients:

1 cup thickened cream
¼ cup sifted icing sugar
2 punnets strawberries
Soft liquorice sticks, raisins or small chocolate buttons
Method:

Step 1. Gather all ingredients together.

Step 2. Whip cream and icing sugar together until quite firm.

Step 3. Remove the green top from the strawberries and then cut the tip off each. Sit each strawberry on paper towel to soak up the juice.

Step 4. Fill a piping bag with a fluted nozzle with the cream mixture and pipe it onto the cut surface of the strawberry to create a head.

Step 5. Using the tip of the nozzle, join the cream and pipe a liitle “beard” for the Santa halfway down the side of the strawberry. It’s imoportant to make these join up so the cream on the head takes the weight of the cream from the beard. Place tip of strawberry on cream.

Step 6. Pipe a “pom pom” onto the top of the strawberry. Place liquorice, raisins cut in half, or chocolate for eyes and serve.

Notes:

Adding the icing sugar to the cream gives it a bit of structure so it pipes and supports itself firmly. Even though this mixture is firm, you may need to refrigerate these until required so the cream doesn’t collapse in the heat.
It’s really important to place the strawberries on the paper towel or you will have a red mess.
You can add half a teaspoon of vanilla to the cream mixture if you want vanilla cream.