wedding crafts

Dan and I married 10 days ago. So the million dollar question is, how did I get on with the crafts?

Cake:
Very tasty. The unintentioned use of stem ginger to replace some of the dried fruit was a rather lovely touch. Turns out the cakes really didn't need to be taller - there was plenty to go round with some to spare.
Despite the process of covering the 2 tiers with marzipan and icing (on the warmest day of the year) being a sticky and bad-language-inducing process I managed it. The decorations by my Mum's friend were inspired - fun, not too serious. An excellent reflection of the spirit of our wedding.

Bouquet:
A big hit! Everyone loved its quirkyness. The kids fought over holding it. It did take a bit of a battering, but survived relatively intact. And best of all it'll last way longer than real flowers.

Bridesmaids's dresses
Finished in time. Both girls seemed comfortable in their pretty dresses. They looked very lovely in the ceremony, but were comfy enough to run around in the park after.

My dress

Completed with a few days to spare. I learnt lots from the process. A few flaws in the finished dress, but nothing too crucial. I was very relieved not to have messed up my beautiful fabrics.

that's me in the middle





Bunting

I cheated! I stapled a bunch of old playing cards to tape and used that to string up as bunting. I did the same with some butterfly shapes cut out of multi coloured felt. Given that the rain started that night and destroyed all outside decorations I was glad I hadn't expended a lot of time and effort on them!

So there you are: wedding crafts complete!

Although we didn't ask for any gifts we had some wonderful handcrafted ones: paintings, wood turning, knitted items, cupcakes. We had a brilliant couple of days.

Wedding craft project: An update

Today is 9 days until I get married, so time for an update on project 'craft your own wedding'!

Progress so far:

1. Cake
Baked and regularly dowsed with brandy. Last night I covered the 2 layers with marzipan.
Good things:
#1 The crumbs I had tasted good.
#2 A friend of my Mum's has offered to decorate it. She's an artist so I have high hopes of a very pretty result.
Possible worries:
#1 The cakes a quite stumpy - about half as tall as most wedding cakes. Hopefully that's fine and everyone will be happy with having a higher ratio of icing to fruit cake!
#2 I forgot to brush the cake tiers with apricot jam before covering with marzipan. Hopefully that's not a completely crucial step.
To do:
Ice with white icing in a couple of days time and deliver to my mum for decorating by her friend.

2. Bouquet
Brooches collected, ribbon flowers made, all attached to wire stems and gathered together. I've made a fabric and tulle yoke made to sit round the top.

To do:
Bind the stems with ribbon.

3. Bridesmaid dresses
One completed, one needs the hem finishing off. This is the completed one:

To do: give both dresses a good press, finish the hem of the other dress.

4. My dress
Silk cut out and sewn, lining attached, zip inserted. Buttons bought, covered with silk and sewn on.

To do:
Sew on loops to close the top of the bodice, hem the lining of the skirt, hem the outer layer of the skirt, inserting horsehair braid to give it some body.

5. Bunting
Not started yet. Oops! To be honest though, it wouldn't matter terribly if this didn't get made in time as we have quite a few other decorations: pretty lanterns and strings of lights etc.

I'm pretty sure that this is all do-able in 9 days, with a full time job to juggle and various other organisational tasks for the wedding. It should be possible I think. I have a schedule, so as long as I don't slack off it should be all good.

I'm enjoying feeling crafty. My employer might not be enjoying the fact that I'm consistently 10 minutes late to work at the moment!

the wedding craft project

I'm getting married 4 weeks today, and because I do like a project its a very DIY wedding. Is it wrong to turn your own wedding into a craft project? I'm quite liking having lots of crafts to do, but now the deadlines are drawing close so the pressure's on!

Here's my to do list. I'll post an update nearer the day to let you know if I managed to finish everything in time.

Make my wedding dress
Progress so far: Practice version made in calico, practice bodice made in fabric similar to the real thing, real fabric chosen, bought and cut out. Started sewing the bodice.


Make bridesmaids dresses
Progress so far: Nearly done! Just need to hand sew the waist bands and hem the dresses.

Make wedding cake
Progress so far: 2 fruit cakes baked. Currently being dowsed in brandy at regular intervals so that they are suitable boozy by 2nd June. Will need to ice them a couple of days before the wedding and make a sponge or carrot cake for the final layer.


Make bouquet from vintage brooches
Progress so far: brooches collected, wire and tape bought to turn them into a bouquet.


Make bunting to decorate the garden for the party
Progress so far: None, but I have loads of fabric scraps so I' m sure it will be quick to do.

Its a fair amount to complete in 4 weeks, but hopefully I'll do it.

Birthday Cake

I am a bad girlfriend. It is Dan's birthday today. I forgot about it entirely until saturday, and then it was because my Mum mentioned it that I remembered. Not that Dan minds in the slightest, but I feel guilty.

Cue urgent ordering of a present (which hasn't arrived yet - oops), and slightly frantic wednesday evening efforts on the cake-baking front.

So here's Dan's birthday cake:

Its called a Passion Cake. Not sure why, but its essentially a banana and carrot cake with walnuts (I know that sounds a bit wrong but you can't taste the carrots so its just a moist banana loaf). I sandwiched it together with cream-cheese icing and sprinkled a few walnuts on the top. The walnuts looked lovely - they were foraged late last year in the woods near where we live and have been drying out in a bowl in our living room. It was good to find a suitable occasion to use them.

I won't get to taste-test this one as Dan has taken it to share out at work, but hopefully I'll get feedback. With any luck I managed to cut off all the singed bit on the top caused by the wierd hot-spot in our oven!

UPDATE: Dan said he was the most popular man in the office yesterday, all the cake went in about 2 minutes, and there was much disappointment from those that were too slow to get a piece. 

Finally some cooking!

I've failed dismally in the cooking stakes over the last few weeks. Marathon training has completely taken over my life, and has not left much time for browsing cook books to come up with interesting dishes.

However, this weekend being a 4-day weekend I actually found time to both run and cook something good! I had a little bit of a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall moment, and had a go at making (a very small quantity of) homemade yoghurt, and also a Jamaican Ginger cake from the River Cottage Everyday cookbook.

Hugh's programme was on the TV last night, which is what finally prompted me to have a go at the yoghurt. Dan had mentioned the process a few months back but we hadn't tried it out up until today. After my breakfast this morning I had a scoop of yoghurt left in the tub, so it seemed an opportune time to have a go. My jar of yoghurt-to-be is currently sitting on the hearth swaddled in tea towels to keep it warm, where it will stay until 9pm tonight: Taste test in the morning! If it works I'll buy a thermos flask to keep it warm next time - its not very practical to light the fire every time you want a bit of yoghurt!

And so to the baking. I felt I was overdue a baking session, and my old neighbour does like a slice or two of cake when I'm making it, so today I flicked through my books until I found a recipe where I already had all the ingredients. Jamaican ginger cake was the choice, although I did swap the rum for brandy because that's what we had (and surely once cooked in a ginger cake it would be pretty tricky to tell the difference anyway). Despite the industrial quantities of golden syrup, sugar and black treacle the cake didn't turn out ridiculously rich and sweet. The ginger and allspice gave it a little kick. Dan wants to try in with creme fraiche, I think a roast banana would be a yummy addition, either way its a good cake.

Two ways with beetroot

Leafing through my Riverford Farm cookbook the other day it struck me that I don't think I've ever eaten a beetroot. The strong smell and psychadelic colour of the pickled variety have always put me off, and I'd never really considered it as a stand-alone vegetable. Still, I'm all for trying to challenge my taste buds these days, so I resolved to cook beetroot next time I found it for sale. Funny how as soon as I decided that, I spotted it in the farmshop.

The recipe I chose was a beetroot gratin, from the Riverford cookbook. I wasn't sure I was ready for cooking the beetroot and eating it whole and unadulterated, so a slight dilution with cream, garlic and summer savoury from the garden seemed a good beginners beetroot choice. I did also cheat a little by using 350g beetroot and 200g potato rather than all beetroot.

I have to say, I was worried. The thought of dinner potentially being disgusting when you are really hungry is not funny. I should have trusted in Riverford though. Afterall, they haven't let me down before.

Despite the dish coming out of the oven looking distinctly alarming:


And staining both the smoked haddock and cabbage which I served with it a vibrant shade of pink:


It was actually a really lovely dish. Subtle flavoured, creamy, and a lighter and less stodgy version of a dauphinoise. If I feel like staining the kitchen and my fingers bright pink again I'll make this for dinner. Very tasty.

As the beetroot was sold by the bunch I was left with a couple of beetroot globes to use up. I keep reading how good beetroot is in cake - like carrots it helps fruit or chocolate cakes stay wonderfully moist. Further on in the Riverford book I discovered a recipe for a carrot/beetroot cake. Dan had requested cake for work as he's leaving for a new job, so I figured I had to live up to my reputation for providing unusual foodstuffs. No standard Victoria sponge for the office then: they were going to get a beetroot and carrot cake. And if they decided it was too wierd to eat then all the more for me!

The batter was a truly alarming bright pink colour, but I'm pleased to say that once it was baked it had only a subtle pink tinge, which was much more appealing!



Apparently some people did turn their noses up at the cake. Wierd how the thought of beetroot in a cake is repulsive to some people, but eating food stuffed full of chemicals is just fine with them! Those that did try the cake did like it, and Dan even had a request for the recipe.

My assessment of the recipe is that it either needs the addition of some spices, like nutmeg or cinnamon, or it needs a cream cheese icing. So, some tweaking required, but a fairly decent cake.

The recipe can be found here.

Steamed pudding

There are a number of items that have been sitting on my 'to do' list for quite some time. One of these was steamed syrup sponge - a childhood favourite of Dan's. I tried it once last year, but my recipe turned out more like sticky toffee pudding. Nice, but not what I was after.

Given that Dan had spent 2 weekends and every evening last week under my car trying to get it roadworthy I felt that he definitely deserved a treat, so on saturday I made a second attempt at the pudding.



This time is was declared a winner: better than his mum's version! So all credit to Delia Smith, who's recipe I used. It gained me major brownie points and a boyfriend who was no longer in a stinking bad mood.

We were super-indulgent and served the recipe with double cream, although I think that custard is the more traditional choice. I did adapt the recipe slightly and cut down the quantities, so here's the method I ended up with:

Steamed Syrup Sponge
Serves 5-6

20g black treacle
50g golden syrup
115g self-raising flour
2/3 teaspoon baking powder
115g butter (softened)
2 eggs
115g soft light brown sugar

Grease an 800ml capacity pudding basin. Spoon the golden syrup into the bottom of the basin.
Sift the flour and baking powder. Add all the other ingredients and beat well for several minutes.
Spoon the batter into the pudding basin and level the top.
Place a sheet of foil over a sheet of greaseproof paper, make a pleat in the centre, and place this foil-side uppermost on top of the pudding basin. Pull it down the sides and tie round the basin with string. Make a string handle for lifting the basin.
Steam for 1 1/2 hours, checking the water level half way through to ensure it doesn't boil dry.
To serve, loosen the pudding all round using a palette knife, invert it on to a plate. Delia suggests spooning more golden syrup over the top at this stage, but I didn't do that and it was plenty sticky and sweet anough as it was.
Serve warm with cream, custard, creme fraiche, or vanilla icecream.

Do expect to have to go on a diet after eating just a single helping, but it will be completely worth it!

Cake and neighbourlyness

A couple of months ago my mother burdened me with a sourdough cake starter. The starter and instructions for its nuture and ultimate baking had been doing the rounds of her workplace. Most people had dutifully tended their starter for 10 days, divided it into 4, baked one, and distributed the rest. They all took their completed cakes in to taste test the different versions. All sounds very lovely and communal.

But it appears my mum ran out of people to distribute starters to, so when my brother-in-law came to visit he brought with him the gift of 'Hermann the German Sourdough cake'. No explanation, no phonecall to see if I wanted to have a go. Just...there it was.

So, I cursed a little (who wants to wait 10 days for cake?) and then figured I'd have a try at the thing. The tending was easy - just feed it with flour and sugar every few days. It appeared to be realtively indestructable - an extra day here and there did it no harm at all.

But then I got to the point of dividing it up. I know no-one who might want to tend a cake for 10 days. Even if it is super easy. So I began "Operation bake LOTS of cake". I baked all 4. One went to my office, one went to Dan's. The final two were sliced up and half frozen, half eaten.

The beauty of this cake is that you can throw in pretty much any flavourings you fancy, so I emptied the contents of the dried fuit tub, the fruit from the fridge, and also made a carrot cake version. Also, it does freeze well. And it is rather tasty. (I shouldn't be being so grotty about it really - My only complaint is the wait-time.)

Even with lots of cake in the freezer there was far too much cake in our house for 2 people to get through before it went stale, so I took some over the road to our old neighbour. He's a funny chap - I've given him cake when we've had too much once or twice before, and he's always amazingly grateful. I guess its not the kind of thing he would make for himself.

Two days later Bob stopped me on the road and told me he'd never eaten anything like my cake and that he'd pay me to make him another. I felt guilty I'd jettisoned the project and had no more sourdough starter.

Well, I put it out of my mind - afterall I couldn't make him another. I didn't have a starter to do so, and I couldn't 100% remember what I'd put in his (dried apricots and bananas, with some fresh blueberries I think, maybe some vanilla or cinnamon.) But then last weekend Bob came round with a gift of runner beans and tomatoes from his garden, and apples from someone's orchard (probably stolen!). Well it seemed churlish not to respond, so I took some sourdough cake slices out of the freezer and dropped them round.

On tuesday I came home to find more runner beans and a pot of plum jam on the doorstep, along with a note:



After I stopped chuckling I dutifully dropped round more cake from the freezer.

But those were the last slices....so what happens now? I wonder if he can be mollified by a different kind of cake?!

Birthday cake

3rd May is Dan's birthday. We decided not to go out this year, but I still wanted to make it special so I gave him the option to choose any dinner he wanted. He chose beef wellington and dauphinoise potatoes - high effort, but his absolute favourite. I made myself a monkfish wellington, which was delicious. (I found the recipe on the BBC website here.)

But a birthday isn't a proper celebration without cake, so I had to make a birthday cake. Dan's not a particular fan of chocolate cakes and sponge cakes, and with just the two of us in our household we wouldn't get through that kind of cake before it went stale anyway. Instead I chose to make an Orange Polenta Cake - the recipe comes from the Ottolenghi cook book. I'm a total amateur with sugar cookery, so I had to make 3 attempts before I managed a proper caramel for the top of the cake, but I got there in the end. The citrusy-fresh orange scent of the cake was AMAZING as it cooked. Here it is straight out of the oven:


(although the colour cast seems a bit odd on this photo.)

And this is it once it had cooled and I'd glazed it with some of my Mum's homemade marmalade:



We had a slice of the cake each on Dan's birthday. Dan had his with a scoop of creme fraiche. The cake had a slightly grittier texture than a normal sponge (possibly because I coudn't find instant polenta). That wasn't unpleasant though - in fact it was rather nice. The cake was moist, slightly bitter on the top, very orangey and utterly gorgeous. I'd buy the recipe book just for this cake!

Traditionally you have to take cakes to work on a birthday, and orange cake didn't seem the most portable variety, so I also made some rasberry cupcakes. (Dan was fitting our new bathroom all weekend, so it seemed only fair that I assume responsibility for work cake snacks for him!) The recipe was from the Primrose Bakery cupcake book - a vanilla sponge swirled with homemade rasberry jam, then filled with a little spot of rasberry jam and iced with vanilla buttercream icing. I decorated them with a little grated white chocolate and silver sugar balls.



I know they look a bit girly and pink and white for a boy's birthday, but if you're going to get your girlfirend to make cakes for your office what do you expect?!



Of course he told everyone he made them himself. Some of them even believed it.

An on-going love affair

I do love rhubarb.

I find it particularly appealling at this time of year when its the forced variety available. It comes out a beautiful shade of pink when its stewed. Sadly, I think there's probably only a very short amount time left in the forced rhubarb season, so I've been eek out every last morsel of enjoyment I can from it! (Although it does feel wierd to buy rhubarb after years of having it in the garden - I must plant some for next year.)

So far my rhubarb experiments haven't got much further than crumble, stewed with strawberries, or cheesecake. All fantastic. However, browsing the internet I stumbled across Rhubarb Custard cake, and that sounded like it just had to be tried.



And indeed it was delicious. Lovely and crunchy on the top, with the moist texture of drizzle cake on the inside. Perfect served warm for pudding, but also a big hit with my work colleagues the next day.

The recipe can be found here on the Lazy Giraffe blog. She makes pretty jewellery too.

Delegation is the name of the game

Last time I made chocolate cake it was a DISASTER.

More of it ended up on the bottom of the oven than in the cake tin, and it had to be turned into a trifle-style dessert instead of being proper cake. Having spent a morning scraping burnt choclate goo off the oven I haven't been too keen to try my hand at cake-baking again.

But for a birthday, chocolate cake is the law, so I delegated the task to my younger sister. And she really came up trumps with a chocolatey-jammy deliciously sinful concoction.

Apparently it was from the recipe book published by this bakery, which both makes me want to go to the bakery to over-indulge in cake, and makes me think that I might just have to buy the recipe book and try making cake again.

I'm tempted.

cooking up a storm

My Dad likes to say that if there's an easy way of doing something and a difficult way of doing it I'll always find the hard way. This sprung to mind today as I spent all afternoon in the kitchen.

On the May Day bank holiday monday Dan and I are having a little house warming party/birthday party for Dan. It will be lovely to have our friends, new and old, round to visit. Its going to be a busy few days though: I'm off to the ballet on the friday evening, then my parents are coming to visit for saturday and sunday. Its going to be a lovely social weekend, but there will be no time to cook anything for our party guests that weekend.

I really didn't want to buy frozen pizzas or other crappy processed food that would be easy but not particularly nice. So, today I've been getting organised, and cooking up a storm with freezeable food.

First up, a trip to the farmers market and farm shop for ingredients.
Look how lovely the eggs I bought are:



I suppose its a little odd to feel pleased by pretty eggs, but I did enjoy a childhood-nostalgia lunch of dippy-egg.



Then I knuckled down to the catering.

First up; bread.
I was a bit stupid and forgot to to dust the baking paper with flour to stop the bread sticking. Consequently, the 1st batch will not be going to the party. Dan and I will have to eat it ourselves and pick off the paper as we go!

Then cheesecake.
Its somewhat horrifying the amount of cream and cheese in a cheesecake, but it always seems to go down well. Yummy. I have tried making cheesecake before but it didn't set. This time I had more success, so we have one Rhubarb and Ginger cheesecake, and one Mixed Berry cheesecase.



On to the quiches. A couple of roasted vegetable ones and one quiche-lorraine style onion, bacon and tomato quiche.

Ooof. The freezer's pretty full now.

I'll make a couple of tomato and mozzarella pizzas tomorrow, then that's enough for now.

It wasn't all hard work though. I had time for an icecream in the sunshine at the farmshop. Apple pie flavour no less.

Devil's food cake...oh yum

February is a month of birthdays in our family. In fact, its quite ridiculous - of the 9 members of my immediate family 4 have birthdays in February. My younger sister comes first on the 6th. So birthday cake was required.

Now then, as far as I'm concerned birthday cake means chocolate cake. Nothing else will do.

I decided to try out one of the recipes from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook.



The book has had terribly mixed reviews, but I love the cakes in the cafe so I decided it was definitely worth a go. It had to be Devil's Food Cake; surely the ultimate chocolate cupcake?

I was a little puzzled by some of the instructions in the recipe until I decided that it was written for people making cakes in a food processor. It wasn't too tricky to work out how to adapt it for those of us who don't think its worth paying £400 for a Kitchenaid.


(Even if they are pretty)

The method for this cake was quite different to how you'd normally make a sponge cake so I could see why practiced bakers might read it, decide it didn't make sense, adapt the method, and end up with a bad cake. I followed the instructions (well duh!) and it worked out just fine.

I iced the fairy cakes with vanilla frosting, but found I actually only needed half the recommended quantity. The cakes turned out moist and chocolatey but not heavy.

I do like chocolate cake.



Devil's Food Cake (makes about 12 cupcakes)
This is my adapted method for people making it by hand.

100g plain flour
20g cocoa powder (I used Green and Black's)
140g caster sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch salt
40g butter (at room temperature)
NB: I used goat's butter which I'd never used before but it worked really well
120ml milk
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 170C.
Put flour, cocoa, sugar and baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Rub in the butter until the mixture is the consistency of breadcrumbs.
In a separate bowl whisk together egg, milk and vanilla.
Pour half of the liquid into the flour mixture and stir to combine.
When well mixed add the other half of the liquid and mix until smooth. Don't over mix!
Spoon into cake cases and bake for about 20 minutes.

Allow to cool completely before icing.

Icing

Beat together 125g sieved icing sugar and 40g butter. Combine a tablespoon of milk and a drop of vanilla extract. Add the milk mixure to the icing sugar mixture a little bit at a time. Keep beating away until the whole lot is light and fluffy and well combined. Spread over your cakes and decorate as you see fit.

Paris, snow, and the best laid plans...

Back in October I booked a couple of train tickets to Paris for my Mum's birthday. We headed off on our jaunt on the first week of the new year, had a lovely time being culture-vultures in the biting cold, hoping from museum to cafe to museum. Then we tried to get on our train home.



It was cancelled.

The queue for the 3 previous departures went all the way round the Gare du Nord. There was no way we were getting back to London that night. But, you know, Paris isn't such a bad place to be stranded for a day longer than anticipated! We sauntered back to our hotel, which fortunately still had a room available, had a lovely meal of houmous, olives, tapenade and fresh crusty french bread, a couple of glasses of red wine in the cafe round the corner, and resolved to try again the next day.

I was convinced we would spend all day queueing for a train, so we fortified ourselves with coffee and croissants, bought quiche and biscuits from the bakery on the corner, and headed back to face the Eurostar.

Finally arriving home through the snow at 8pm (not too late considering the circumstances), after a magical mystery tour of northern France I realised we had virtually no vegetables and because of the thick snow no vegetable box had been delivered. That left us with a cooking apple and some red cabbage until I next felt ready to tackle the snowy roads. Still, the red cabbage looked like a nice one, and I'd been meaning to try out a braised/pickled red cabbage recipe for a while. Recipe of the week was decided by default.



Dan was really enthusiastic about how this turned out. It was delicately spiced, fruity, with enough sharpness to keep it interesting. Often when I've had red cabbage cooked in this way the fruit and spice have overwhelmed the flavour of the cabbage, but the quantities in this recipe didn't do that.

We had it with roast chicken, and the next week I reheated it to have with pheasant casserole. I've had it with turkey in the past, and Dan tells me it goes well with beef too. I think it would also be tasty served cold, so all in all quite a versatile recipe.

Apple and spice Red Cabbage

1 dessertspoon olive oil
1/2 a red cabbage, finely sliced
1 medium sized cooking apple, peeled, cored and diced
3 tablespoon apple juice
Dark brown muscovado sugar
Cider Vinegar
Cinnamon
6 cloves
1/2 handful of raisins or sultanas
salt & pepper

Put the olive oil into a heavy bottomed saucepan and swirl it around until it coats the whole base. Put 1/3 of the red cabbage into the pan and spread it out to form an even layer. Put 1/3 of the apple in a layer on top of this, add about 2 teaspoons of sugar, then pour over 1 tablespoon of apple juice, drizzle over a small amount of cider vinegar, scatter on a couple of cloves and a shake of cinnamon, and season with salt and pepper. Repeat for 2 more layers, then sprinkle the raisins over the top and add a good slosh of cold water.

Bring to the boil over a low heat, then cover and simmer for about 2 1/2 hours. It doesn't need any attention to speak of during this time. I actually went out for a run and left it for a good 45 mins, but it might be a good idea to check it every half an hour or so and give it a good stir so that it doesn't dry out on top.

Enjoy.

PS look what a beautiful cake display we spotted in the Saint-Germain district of Paris! Pretty pretty....

Christmas catchup

Apologies for the rather long Christmas break between posts. I won't bore you with a super long post but here's a brief run down of my new recipes over the Christmas period:

1. Christmas cake!



I was really pleased with this. I made it from Nigel Slater's fruit cake recipe and it turned out with just the right amount of citrus and fruit. Lovely.

I'd made fruit cakes before but never one that was such a high proportion of fruit to flour. The recipe was quite free and easy with the fruits you should use which made it easy to tailor to your own tastes. I used my new favourite dried fruit - figs! I had dried figs for the first time this past spring when we went to Croatia. They were served with coffee and schnapps absolutely everywhere and I liked the sticky grainy texture of them. We bought a bag from the market - you can just about see them for sale in the picture, bagged up with bay leaves.



They appeared in Sainsburys just in time for my Christmas cake. Marvellous!

I also made the marzipan (a bit fiddly to get onto the cake) and the royal icing (took longer to set than I'd anticipated). I felt I had make both in order to keep in the spirit of the recipe challenge; shop bought would have seemed like cheating.





2. Mulled white wine

I think the recipe for this needs a little tweaking as it tasted more like mulled cider, and I would definitely have preferred a winey-er taste. I think next time I'll put a lot less apple juice and less sugar too (the quantity here is half the recipe quantity and it was still a bit sweet for my tastes). Don't get me wrong, the flavours were nice and it was a lovely warming drink, but it seemed a shame not to taste the wine much. Didn't stop us drinking it all of course!

Here's the recipe:

Apple & spice white wine

1 * 750ml bottle white wine (I used Riesling)
400ml apple juice
2 cinnamon sticks
2 star anise
50g demerera sugar
a few strips of orange rind

Put all the ingredients in a pan over a medium heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Heat gently for about 10 minutes to allow the flavours to infuse, but don't allow the mixture to boil or you will lose all the alcohol content.
Serve.
Easy peasy.

3. Pickled pears

I made these a couple of weeks ago after catching a bit of the Hairy Bikers Christmas cookery special. They need about 10 days pickling time before you can eat the pears, so we had our first taste of them shortly after Christmas with cold meats, oatcakes and cheese.

Yes, you read correctly - I did eat cheese. I bought some Manchego cheese to have when we had my younger sister and my Dad up for lunch, and I discovered I actually liked it. In very small quantities.

Anyway, I digress - the pears were tasty, although my sister thought it was distinctly wierd that I would pickle pears.
She may have a point.

4. To go with the Manchego cheese - hazlenut and black pepper cookies.

I came across the recipe for these on a blog called Chocolate and Zuccini. Its written by a French lady (in English although there is a French version). They sounded interesting and she mentions that they go well with figs. Since I had a few figs left over from the Christmas cake it seemed the ideal time to make these biscuits.

They turned out to be a semi-sweet biscuit, and did go well with the dried fruit. The black pepper added a pleasant zing but I think I would use cinnamon instead in future, just because I prefer the warmth of cinnamon.

5. Brussel sprouts

I know these are a love-them or hate-them vegetable, but I definitely fall into the love-them category. Which is just as well as we've had them in our vegetable box quite a lot recently.



A colleague at work suggested baking them in the oven in a parmesan cream sauce. I liked the general idea, but thought all that cream and cheese would probably disagree with my stomach. Instead I found a recipe that suggested baking the sprouts in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It was a good way to do them. I would imagine that a scattering of grated parmesan and a sprinkle of pinenuts would be a tasty addition.

Here's the method:

Balsamic Brussels

Mix 1 dessertspoon of olive oil with 1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. Peel and quater your sprouts then toss them in the oil mixture until well coated.
arrange in a single layer on a baking tray or roastig tin and cook for about 20 mins at 180-190C.

Christmas

There's something about the last week or so before Christmas which puts me in the mood for baking. I want the smell of cinnamon and ginger and citrus wafting through the house and snowy dustings of sugar and flour on the kitchen surfaces.



I made my Christmas cake a couple of weeks ago, to Nigel Slater's recipe, and this weekend I will need to put the marzipan on it in readiness for icing on Christmas eve. That will be my contribution to the family Christmas food as I know my parents never have time to make their own cake. I have to confess I've never made anything for the Christmas meal before - my job has always been to peel, stir, chop, and lay the table. This year I'm spending Christmas at Dan's parents' place, but I still wanted to do something helpful for the Greenaway family Christmas preparations. So the cake won't be there until Boxing Day, but who needs Christmas cake on Christmas Day anyway?! After all that other food the Christmas cake always ends up being a post-walk Boxing Day nibble.

I'm breaking with tradition and doing mulled white wine on Christmas Eve this year. I had it at the Christmas market in Lille last December and it was lovely, so I'm going to recreate it at home with a bottle of Riesling, apple juice, cinnamon sticks, orange peel and a sprinkle of other Christmas flavours. Yum scrum.


I like to make foodie Christmas presents where I can, although I do worry that despite the fact that plenty of thought and effort go into them alot of people might consider homemade items to be a 2nd class Christmas present. Nonetheless, I'm taking the risk and baking this weekend. Tubs of miniature shortbread biscuits for my new neighbours, dried pears and apricots dipped in milk and dark chocolate as semi-healthy festive nibbles, and a second attempt at fudge. Christmas is the only time of year when I fancy sweeties.


The fudge has disaster-potential written all over it. Last year I tried to make fudge and all I ended up with was a very burnt saucepan which took 2 days to clean. Its taken me a year, but I'm now good and ready to do battle wth the sugar syrup again. Lets hope I can succeed on the 2nd go, as I don't think I would have the determination to go for 3rd time lucky!
Wish me luck.....

UPDATE
The fudge worked! My neighbours said they finished it in one sitting because they liked it so much. They might just be flattering me, but its still nice of them to say so.