Sweet Pouches & Amaretti Recipe

Are you getting into the Christmas spirit yet? We put up our tree this Sunday and decorated it with the kids whilst listening to jingles. It was such a lovely and relaxed family day. I managed to squeeze in quite a bit of quilting in too (quite a luxury at the weekends) and finally finished my Cozy Christmas quilt top. It's being quilted at the minute, I can't wait to share it with you. It should be finished just in time for Christmas!

Tomorrow is our son's last day of first year in primary school (called 'Reception' here in South Australia). How fast the year has flown by, it feels like only yesterday when it was his first day! For teacher gifts I decided to sew some sweet little pouches and fill them up with yummy treats for his hard-working and lovely teachers. For the fabrics I chose these new Atsuko Matsuyama fabrics I recently bought from Sew Stiching Happy on Etsy, one of my fave fabric shops. I adore these sweet colours!

I am very pleased with how the pouches turned out! For the decorations I got my inspiration from these sweet little pouches by Retro Mama, though I needed mine to be quite a bit bigger so I winged my own pattern for the construction. For the pouch 'filling' I made our fave festive treat: Amaretti. They are Italian almond macaroons that are crisp on the outside and chewy in the middle. Gluten and dairy free, and oh so yummy!

When we used to live in London my hubby and I were addicted to amaretti from an Italian restaurant/deli chain there called Carluccio's. Alas when we moved to Australia we couldn't get them anymore so I had to learn how to make them. After lots of trial and error I perfected my recipe over the years, which I wrote up for you. If you like marzipan, you will love these sweet cookies! So easy to make too. Pin it, and enjoy!