christmas baking - gingerbread afternoon

i love christmas. let me rephrase that, i love the christmas season. a season of giving, creating and baking. mmm baking!

for the last four christmases i have devoted an afternoon to baking gingerbread creations, the first afternoon i did on my own when we lived in tamworth. it was an afternoon of solitude and bliss, i always forget the OD on gingerbread dough each year!

the second time was also in tamworth, i was 8 months pregnant and my sister Cat was over to celebrate with us. I think I gingerbreaded her out that year.

2009 christmas was celebrated back in perth, so both my sisters and mum came over to gingerbread it up. and in 2010 we did it all over again but this time we had our house guests Ingo & Kate playing with us and my BFF Sandy with her boys Tasman & Ryan over to create some christmassy goodness. I premade the dough (4 batches of gingerbread goodness!) that morning whilst samuel napped.

making the dough in the morning was a smart move. we had people in the house by 230pm and started rolling out dough and cutting christmas figurines. the new addition this year - a dashhound cookie (not christmassy but very 2010 in spirit!). we had bowls of silver cashews, mini m&ms and sprinkles on the table, trays for the finished masterpieces and piping bags full of lemoney white icing and green icing.

i really have no idea how many cookies we created in the end but this is a snapshot of some of the finished products.

side note : many of these biscuits were eaten by us and given to friends and family as christmas presents.
2011: will this be the year that i have a gingerbread making afternoon PLUS a gingerbread house making evening? oh imagine the creativity that could be had!!

all of these photos were taken by my younger younger sister k-sara xxx

christmas baking - cake, cookies, chocolate and fish

so I have been busy and no I am not crazy and stay up late and get up early. I have a wee bit of time at home playing with Samuel as I only work 3 half days a week. I really REALLY enjoy my four day weekends with Samuel and they are especially fantastic when Jonathan isn't working and has time off too. We get to do something as a family and something as a couple. I really love our family. This weekend we had fish and chips down at South Beach (sure it lasted 20 minutes and we ended up eating at home because Samuel wanted to see the beach and play with everyone's doggies) and last week we had a date night at Blend Cafe in Melville. Soooooooooooooo good.


Onto my cooking. I have a few recipes that I have wanted to make this season, mainly as gifts for our friends and family. Of course, I need to try them out first though! I don't want to give something that tastes ikky!


So the first thing I made was a christmas cake. Initially when I cut into this cake, it was very rummy! But now - droolishious! I have gone out and bought more ingredients to bake a few more of these cakes. Here is an inside peak - full of dates, cherries, raisins, currants and prunes. Very VERY moist.



Now my Gran (mums mum) is a ginger freak - in a good way. When we lived in Sydney I use to buy her these Indonesian Ginger Lollies from the IGA in Chinatown and mail them to her. She use to ration them out each week. So when I saw these Buttery Ginger Squares I HAD to make them for her present. They have crystalised ginger and ginger powder in them and smell divine. I decided to bake 1/4 of the mixture. The rest is rolled into logs which Gran can cut at her leisure from the freezer. It lasts for one month in the freezer. Cool huh? Most importantly, I got to use my lovely peacock paper on the wrapping. You can buy it from The Wrapping Paper Company.


I have decided to enter this recipe into the December Cook Off Competition at Kitchen Corners. How I love Damaris and her blog. Its a refreshing read which I recommend. Here is to inspiring her to bake some Australian recipes!!!


Now the buttery ginger square recipe came from Belinda Jeffery's 'mix&bake' cookbook. The same book holds the secrets to the last minute christmas cake featured above.


As quoted from her book :

300g plain flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp ground ginger

180g crystallised ginger chunks
250g unsalted butter
150g brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
optional, flaked almonds to decorate


1 - put flour, baking powder, salt + ground ginger into processor and pulse to combine. add ginger chunks and mix until chopped into small chunks (or forget about it like I did and make it so small you cannot see it but you can taste it!). Tip this into a bowl (important, although I completely MISSED this sentence, recipe did not FAIL!).

2 - put butter and sugar into processor. whiz until creamy. drizzle in vanilla whilst machine is on.


3 - tip flour back in and combine with butter. do this quickly as too much mixing once flour is added can make the biscuits tough.


4 - scrape the dough, which is pretty soft, into a bowl. cover with gladwrap and put into fridge for around 45 minutes to get firmer. divide dough into 2, roll into a log and wrap in foil lined with baking paper. put back into fridge for at least 2 hours or overnight. you can freeze at this point.


5 - take logs out of the fridge and bang onto the bench to create a flat side (or use a rolling pin if your kids are asleep) and this creates the square shape. back into the fridge for 15 minutes.


6 - preheat oven to 160C. cut dough into 8mm slices and put onto baking tray. cook for roughly 25-30 minutes. make sure you rotate trays and turn front to back for even coverage. they will change colour when ready. cool on tray for 5 minutes, then transfer to rack.

Your home will smell fantastic, trust me!

Yesterday I made two batches of Rocky Road. Was I somewhat inspired by Corrie's White Rocky Road and Chocolate Rocky Road blog entrys. Why YES, I somewhat was ....



Now last night we had our church connect group christmas dinner. I baked wild snapper (which created a funny discussion on what exactly is domestic snapper??) stuffed with nutty rice. It is a really lovely recipe. The rice is flavoured with coriander, cumin, fresh coriander, salt, pepper, parsley, lemon rind and toasted pistachios.

Unfortunately I dont have a cooked picture from last night. Let me know if you want any recipes, I am more than happy to share!

labne + cupcakes + cookies = mmm

right-e-o, so i am feeling inspired (mainly because my phone takes an okay picture and its much easier to use than the camera!).

so this weekend (i work PT and hence, have a 4 day weekend) I started making labne. Basically you need nice greek yoghurt, olive oil, garlic and rosemary. Oh and some glass or plastic containers of course! duh. I bought some yummy margaret river greek yoghurt and its currently sitting in the fridge - dripping. I just need to roll it into balls next and infuse in olive oil with garlic and rosemary for at least 24 hours. Am thinking these would go great in the hampers we are making up for christmas presents.

last night my sister had us over for a family BBQ. she is heading to bali for a couple of weeks for a pre-christmas break. she likes white chocolate so i recreated the white chocolate mud-cupcakes for her. but this time i zested a lemon and added it to the mixture. it was lovely. topped with some chocolate buttercream, they were intense. a definate sugar HIT. cupcake wrappers from IKEA!

i bought my cookie container from textile traders earlier this year. isn't she gorgeous?

even better when full of chocolate chip cookies (with walnuts + currants).

these are for afternoon tea tomorrow

yell if you want any recipes xx

baking baking baking

firstly let me apologise in the slackness of my posting. i recently got an iphone4 which takes great photos except i would love to blog from my phone and not have to connect it to the laptop if i want to do a post.

i'll get there.

anywho....a couple of weekends ago our local market had trays of peaches on sale for $5.99. not floury, hard peaches but the ones where your entire home smells like peaches all week long. they were amazing and there was no way that my tribe would get through the box so half were given to my parents to enjoy.

so with the peaches i made bill grangers peach and raspberry slice. it was divine, a tad sweet but divine nevertheless. smelt and tasted like SUMMER.

i have also been getting into making cupcakes. i have a great little womens weekly cupcake book where the base recipe is different in each cake. its great. so far i have tried chocolate raspberry (definately a repeat recipe!) and white chocolate mud cake with chocolate icing (below). these were demolished in an afternoon at my parent-in-law's home. don't they look pretty? am having bbq dinner at my sisters home tomorrow and am planning on recreating these for her. she is a white chocolate kinda gal.

for the first time EVER i made a christmas cake. this one has cherries prunes dates raisins sultanas and currants in it. she is sitting in my fridge, wrapped in foil. awaiting her fate....

so tell me, are you making anything fun this weekend? possibly making some christmas presents? little gifts?

i am making labne this weekend and planning on bottling it for gift giving. thats if it works. we are having a gingerbread making afternoon in two weekends time and i cannot WAIT. this and the screening of the polar express is sure to make christmas feel even more christmassy.