I've been up to a lot this Christmas and preparations started early this year. I attempted to make my first ever Christmas pudding (or puddingsley as I named it) in October. After steaming it for 10 hours, soaking it in brandy and ruining 2 perfectly good saucepans (NOTE: remember to check the saucepan water levels regularly) Puddingsley was ready to be hidden away for 2 months. All that was needed was to feed him brandy every so often (the dream right there).
Next on the list of Christmas creations was a cupcake class at my local cake decorating shop. I wasn't sure what to expect other than a professional telling me I can't pipe swirls and I was right and then some! The class was excellent and gave me some great tips and ideas. Here are the results:
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| Rudolph had some minor transportation injuries. |
It was requested by my Dad (demanded I would say) that I make a Christmas cake. So using whatever leftover dried fruit I had from the Christmas pudding (which was a surprising amount) I made the cake about a month in advance, this time baking it for hours! I was given complete artistic licence when it came to decorating the cake and decided to go with simple yet incredibly gay. So armed with all my new tools from the Cake International Show at the NEC I set to work! I'll let you decide whether I achieved my look:
To get myself into even more of a Christmasy mood I immersed myself in everything Christmasy. This included the Lakeland Christmas magazine (seriously read it or download the app if you haven't already!). The magazine included a recipe for nougat, which I have never made before so I thought I would give it a go. The recipe was quite precise in temperatures and measurements so I was a bit dubious with how the results would to turn. But armed with two little helpers and a never before used sugar thermometer we set to work. After overcoming the initial desire to stick our fingers in the boiling hot sugar we mixed the egg whites and sugar as the recipe stated. however the recipe suggested using a stand mixer and not an electric hand mixer and now I understand why. After 10 minutes of mixing a substance that could be likened to cement we gave up and left it to harden (and oh boy did it harden). If I can gave you some tips for making nougat they would be; have a stand alone mixer, have lots of helpers and use a spatula that won't break when trying to spread out the mixture.
And finally. one more Craftmas instalment (just in case you haven't had enough already) again inspired by Lakeland. I would recommend this to everyone, it's so simple and quick and incredibly effective. All it is is a mould in which you can pour chocolate or use gingerbread with in order to create a cottage. I decided to go with chocolate; milk, white and dark. Once I left it to dry I had the trickier task of assembling it which, when you working with a product that is literally melting in your hands, is harder than assembling an Ikea cupboard without the instructions, or that little allan key thing. I'm of course exaggerating, but anyway, here are the results, complete with snowy windows and cranberry fence:
