Category Archives: Christmas
Brussel Sprout Wreath
The halls are beginning to get decked, the high streets are adorned with lights that are switched on by minor celebrities and tomorrow is the first Sunday in advent. Every household has its own traditions over the festive season, we have many. One being that I make a wreath to hang on the door during Christmas. Over the years they have evolved from a quite traditional wreath to last year’s alternative, yet still festive, creation. Read the rest of this entry
Baked Bean Tin Christmas Cake – pt 1
Before I get chastised for writing a C*&^%$£~s post in October the organised amongst you will be beginning to prep for festive baking time. While Stir-up Sunday, when you traditionally make Christmas Pudding, isn’t until 20thNovember, now is the time to start on the cake to give it sufficient feeding time. A Christmas Cake that hasn’t been stuffed to the gills with alcohol is deemed as substandard in this house. This is the recipe I’ve used for years, and after many request to stop keeping the recipe close to my chest here it is. It’s from a 2005 edition of Prima magazine and produces a lovely moist fruit cake. Read the rest of this entry
Shiny Disco Balls (aka Rum Truffles)
On Monday I was left with the quandary of what to do with left over cake trimmings, though to be honest left over cake in this house is a rare sight. As a child I had a fondness for Rum Truffles. The best ones being from a local bakery called Mellors. These rum truffles were huge, but that could also be due to nostalgic hindsight, just like Wagon Wheels and Monster Munch used to be bigger back then. We also used to make them at home. All I could remember was that is was cake crumbs, rum essence and not much else.
At 6am Monday morning when I was trying to remember the recipe, Google was no help. No help what so ever. A thousand and one recipes for cake pops and the like and fancy truffles with all sorts of ingredients added, but nothing like the simple recipe I could barely remember. Read the rest of this entry
Mince Pies
By the time Christmas has been and gone I’ve worked out I will have made over 450 mince pies in some form or another. Thankfully not for my own consumption but made during the classes I was teaching and for friends and family. I usually make my own mincemeat, but this year due to some of my pupils being unable to come to classes due to illness I was left with nearly a kilogram of mincemeat to use up. To make shop bought mincemeat taste more like homemade mincemeat simply stir in a generous glug of sherry into the mincemeat. No one has to know.
I like using this pastry recipe for mince pies as the addition of orange juice helps shorten the pastry and give it a subtle taste. I don’t sweeten the pastry with sugar because I think the mincemeat is sweet enough. If you wanted the pastry a bit sweeter you could add a small amount of icing sugar to the pastry.
You can top your mince pies with the traditional full covering of pastry, but I prefer to cover with stars. 1) because I think they look nicer 2) you get more mince pies out of your pastry.
Mince Pies
Makes around 12 mince pies
200g plain flour
100g butter
orange juice
200g mincemeat
1 egg, beaten
Demerara sugar (granulated sugar will also work fine)
1) rub the butter into the flour until it has the consistency of breadcrumbs.
2) Add the orange juice 1 tbsp at a time until it forms a soft dough. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for 30 min.
3) Roll out the dough until 5mm thick. Using a 9cm diameter cutter, cut out rounds and press gently into a bun tin.
4) Place a heaped tsp of the mincemeat on top of the dough
5) Top the mincemeat with a pastry star. Brush the star with beaten egg then sprinkle with Demerara sugar.
6) Bake at 180° for 15 minutes.
Christmas Nibbles
Due to the size of The Cottage it does make entertaining more than 6 people quite difficult, so in the week run up to Christmas it is tradition for us to throw drinks & nibbles party as there is no room to host a sit-down meal. With the Christmas tree decked, mistletoe hanging from the beams and a roaring fire ready for chestnut roasting it officialy kicks of the Christmas week for us. We live in what could possibly be the only place in the whole of the UK that hasn’t been hit by snow this week so thankfully guests didn’t have any problems getting to us.
When it comes to the food I’m usually am incharge of the veggie and sweet nibbles whereas Hubs concentrates on the meat and fish and I have to say he’s far better at it than I am with meat and fish. He came up with the Black Christmas Pudding idea as we usually serve it up in one one form another at the party. Last night’s menu included:
Mini Toad in the Hole
Halve the recipe for normal toad in the hole and use chipolatas. Place one chipolata in each section on a bun tin, pour over batter and bake at 220°c for 15 min.
Sticky Squash with Sesame Seeds
Mini Ham & Mushroom Frittatas
Either make one large frittata and slice into bitesized pieces or bake in silicone cake cases for around 15 min
Tempura Prawns with Sweet Chilli Sauce
Onion Bhajis with Riata
Cold meat platter
Vegetable Sticks with Hummus
Black Christmas Pudding topped with Parsnip Puree
Roll black puddings in to golf ball sized balls. Fry off the balls until crispy. Peel and dice a couple of parsnips and fry off with some butter. Blitz the parsnips with a small amount of cream to give a piping consistancy. Pipe a swirl on top of the black pudding. Decorate with a tiny piece of chilli and herb leaf.
Cheeseboard featuring Winchester, Blacksticks Blue, Crozier Blue, Red Leicester and Somerset Brie.
Wishlist – 2010
I admit, I’m not the easiest to buy for or at least I don’t think I am. While scanning the web for Christmas pressies I stumbled across these beauties. I can dream, but certainly wouldn’t say no to them. As my wishlist shows I have a bit of things for birds in craft/art at the moment. Starting at top left:
Starling Brooch – Anna de Ville is an artist based in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. Her silver designs are gorgeous and I already own one of her little wren necklaces. She does commissions and I this starling brooch has to be one of my favourites.
Wool cup cosy – With working from home a great deal of the time I have a habit of making a cup of tea then getting distracted and end up drinking a lukewarm cuppa. I’m sure a snuggly wool cup cosy would make things a great deal better!
Little Birds – Little Doodles illustations are glorious and I especially like her Little Birds collection.
Silver Bird Lariat – This silver lariat is everywhere on Etsy, but it doesn’t stop me loving it.
Beater Blade – I’ve heard so many things about this Beater blade I know I have to try one. Perfect for the times when I’m making cake batter in my Kitchen Aid.
Winter Wonderland bouquet – I’m a big fan of flowers from Blossom Tree. I love this particular bouquet because of the Amaryllis plus the green & cream tones.
Looped Ribbon Necklace – These necklaces remind me of quilling and I adore the shapes that can be made with plain ribbon.
Button Wreath – felt – check; buttons – check. Why wouldn’t you want to use this Button wreath to adorn doors this festive season?
Windrush Candlesticks – Although I don’t really have room in the house for these, I really like how the 3 candlesticks entwine together.
Stirring up for Sunday – Whisky Pudding
The tradition to begin Christmas food preparation, inparticular the Christmas Pudding, begins on Stir up Sunday which is the last Sunday before advent. This year falls it falls on 21st November. The term Stir-up Sunday comes from the first verse of the collect for the day and has been adopted by the Anglican church.
Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Usually I follow this tradition, but this year due to a hectic diary I made my Christmas Pudding a week early. Of all the traditional festive foods the Christmas Pudding is my favourite, it easily wins over Christmas Cake. Even after being full of a traditional Christmas dinner I can always make way for pudding. I can still remember as child my dad walking in to the dining room with the pudding all alight.
Many people have traditions when making their puddings from stirring from east to west to represent the 3 kings, having a wish when stirring it and placing a silver coin in the pudding mix. In my case the traditions seem to be how much alcohol I can get in the pudding along with praying it will come out of the mould.
One of the main reasons I make my own pudding (and mincemeat for that matter) is that I’m quite a fussy being when it comes to festive fayre. I’m not a big fan of suet being used it in sweet dishes but use grated butter which works just as well. If it says there is alcohol in it I want to be able to taste it and it must be jam packed with fruit. I also like to experiment with flavours and making these foods heralds the beginning of the festive season for me.
Thanks to my lack of Whisky knowledge, sorry Hubs, this may be one of the most expensive Christmas puddings I’ve ever made. Previous years the fruit has been soaked in Guinness. This year I wanted to use whisky as I though Hubs had quite a collection and we could do with using some of it. I picked up the closest bottle to hand, sloshed a generous amount over the fruit then decided to read the bottle. I had only gone and picked up some of Hubs’ expensive whisky and used £15 of it in the pudding. I then had a sip of it and had used a peaty whisky. I will admit this does dominate the flavour of the pudding, but by the time it is served in December the intensity of the whisky should hopefully mellow a bit and the spices become more dominant. If you didn’t want to be so extravagant with the alcohol replace some or all with orange juice.
Since making my own Christmas pudding I’ve always wanted to try a spherical mould for curoisity and nostalgic reasons. Bizarrely it looks a bit like a cyberman. I now know from experience why these moulds have gone out of fashion. Eventhough I had buttered the mould I had a few tense moments getting the pudding out of the mould and did wonder if we were going to get two crumbled hemispheres. Due to the pudding being a sphere we also had a few hairy moments when the newly released pudding started to roll on the worktop, cue flashbacks of On Top of Spaghetti. This doesn’t mean I wouldn’t use the mould again. It would work really well for other steamed pudding along with desserts like icecream bombe. The coking instruction below are for making it in a pudding basin rather than a mould.
“Mrs Cratchit left the room alone — too nervous to bear witnesses — to take the pudding up and bring it in… Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day. That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that. That was the pudding. In half a minute Mrs Cratchit entered — flushed, but smiling proudly — with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.” Charles Dickens – A Christmas Carol
Whisky Christmas Pudding
makes 1x 2lb pudding
500g luxury mixed fruit
100g dates, chopped
250ml whisky
zest of 1 lemon
zest of 1 orange
1 medium bramley apple, peeled and grated
100g cold butter, grated, plus extra for the basin
100g dark muscovado sugar, plus 2 tbsp
100g fresh white breadcrumbs
50g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp ground mace
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp mixed spice
2 eggs , beaten
1) In a large bowl soak the mixed fruit, dates, orange & lemon zest and apple in the whisky for 24-48 hours.
2) Butter a 2lb pudding bowl then lightly coat the butter in 2tbsp of muscovado sugar by slowly tipping and turning the bowl.
3) Add the remaining ingredients to the fruit that has been soaking. Stir until well combined. Spoon into the basin and level.
4) Take a sheet or foil and greaseproof and make a pleat in the middle (this allows for the expanding pudding). Place over the top of the pudding bowl, greasproof paper side down, and fix in place with string.
5) Sit the pudding bowl on top of an upturned heatproof saucer inside a saucepan. Pour boiling water half the way up the pudding. Cover and steam for 6 hours. Top water up as required.
6. Once the pudding is cooked cover with fresh greasproof paper and foil. Store in a cool dry place. To reheat either cook in the microwave (minus the foil), on medium, for 10 or steam for a further hour.