Ho ho ho and a bottle of champers

I kept putting off this post as I've been feeling a bit lazy of late, and been somewhat busy eating, catching up with family and friends, getting heatstroke playing tennis, driving, braving the city for some bargain hunting and constructing an anti-sunlight device for my bedroom consisting of sheets sewn together in a umm.. rustic manner. As you might possibly be aware, today is New Year's Eve, so I thought I should get this written up before the new year is upon me and I'm nursing a hangover and hair of the dog on top of being busy and lazy.

I hadn't spent Christmas with my family for a few years, as Christmas 2007 was spent with my (now ex) boyfriend's family, and Christmas 2008 was spent driving between Montreal and New York city (we did manage to pull over on the side of the road for some delicious goat cheese and turkey sandwiches for lunch), so it was really nice to spend it with them and get some stocking action after two years of missing out. This was also our first Christmas with a baby in our immediate family, and my nephew's involvement seems to validate our continued stocking tradition. Do other people still do stockings? Will I ever outgrow it?

After spending Christmas eve building a gingerbread house and catching up with family, it was soon time for the traditional Christmas Eve seafood gorging extravaganza. This year did not disappoint, with some fine dishes on offer - South Australian oysters with Cointreau, coriander and sweet chilli, smoked salmon, smoked albacore, mango & spinach salad, prawns, crays (ok, technically they're Western Rock Lobsters but we're on a nickname basis), herb crumbed fish and scallop & chorizo rosemary skewers.

Christmas Eve deliciousness, with Dad's hand making the large prawns and cray slices looking like teeny tiny little things

My first plate.. seconds and thirds were enjoyed soon after

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Daring Bakers turn Architects

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

Yay! Gingerbread houses! I feel like I've done my dash waxing lyrical about gingerbread in my recent Gingerbread Christmas Biscuits post, and I'm a little weary after the last day spent completely gorging on food and opening exciting presents, so I might let the pictures speak for themselves.

We were given a choice of two different gingerbread recipes, but for the purposes of this post I'm going to give you a different one that I can recommend if you are going to get architectural yourself. If you are just going to make gingerbread biscuits though, I'd recommend my usual gingerbread recipe instead.

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Aussing up Christmas

As I said before, this year's Christmas baking was a bit of a rushed job, and although I would have liked to try out a new Christmassy recipe, I just kept things simple and made a tried and true crowd pleaser. The final component of this year's Christmas baking parcels, making friends with the Fruit Mince Shortbreads and the Gingerbread Biscuits, was therefore really not at all Christmassy but totally Aus. Macadamia ANZAC biccies.

For those of my non-Aussie (not to be confused with "unAustralian") readers, the term ANZAC refers to Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, and ANZAC Biscuits were first made during WWI by loved ones wishing to send treats to soldiers on the front line. This style of biscuit was made as they are quite sturdy and keep well, thus surviving the long journey to the soldiers.

Like most Aussie or NZ things, there is disagreement between Australian and New Zealand sources over where they actually first originated from. I think that given the name we should both claim them equally. I also think that Russell Crowe is totally from New Zealand, and Pavlova belongs to us.

I didn't realise this, but according to Wikipedia the usual protection that restricts the use of the term ANZAC without first obtaining permission from the Minister for Veterans' Affairs is generally excempt for ANZAC Biscuits "as long as these biscuits remain basically true to the original recipe and are both referred to and sold as ANZAC Biscuits and never as cookies". Well, I wouldn't dream of calling these cookies ('twould surely be unAustralian), but I'm a little concerned that the addition of macadamia nuts in my recipe might be seen as not remaining true to the original recipe. Macadamias are at least endemic to Australia. Please don't tell The Hon Alan Griffin MP (dobbing is totally unAustralian).

This recipe is very easy and quick and is always met with cries for more, you can't go wrong with it. The only thing I'd really recommend is to weigh the ingredients instead of measuring, as I find this always creates the perfect consistency, but either way you should get good results.

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Gingerbread you can catch

I didn't really like gingerbread when I was little, but whenever we went to Pizza Hut I begged and pleaded for a Gingerbread Man. I'd eat all the icing, and pick at the gingerbread, wishing there was more icing. Thinking back now, I'm not sure whether I didn't really like gingerbread, or if I just didn't really like Pizza Hut gingerbread. My days of thinking that Pizza Hut's all-you-can-eat was THE meal of choice for a special birthday celebration are long behind me, and I'm pretty sure that they don't even make Gingerbread Men any more, so this may forever remain one of life's mysteries.

Despite getting off to a rocky start, gingerbread and I now get along famously. Instead of taking me back to feelings of eating too much pizza and going overboard at the dessert bar (oh man I so badly wanted one of those in my house!!) it now makes me think of Christmas and Sweden and snow and glögg. I've had a hankering for glögg ever since the festive season kicked into gear, but it's just not doable in 35 degree weather. Beer is definitely winning out as drink of choice, but doesn't pair with gingerbread quite so nicely (even if it's ginger beer).

I first made this gingerbread recipe for Christmas gifts last year, evidence of which you can see in my blog header figure. I liked the recipe so much that it has now apparently made it into my Christmas gift recipe collection. Making these cookies is also a great antidote to all the food and booze sneaking its way into your system at this time of year, as rolling out the chilled dough requires the strength of twenty atom bombs for a fair bit longer than twenty seconds. If you're struggling with this, just let the dough warm a little more - warmer dough isn't as easy to work with once rolled, but you'll still get fine results.

Zoom go the stars across the table and into my mouth

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Fruit Mince Shortbreads

Ahh, yes, Christmas is almost here. You may be mistaken for thinking that I was taking an anti-Christmas stance, what with the distinct lack of Christmas themed posts on this here blog. Although I haven't exactly been prancing around the streets draped in tinsel and merrily singing Feliz Navidad, I'm no scrooge and my non-festiveness has merely been a matter of wedding fever having taken over most aspects of my life. I'm normally one of those annoying people who has their presents bought, if not also wrapped, with at least a few weeks to spare before the big day. This was definitely the case last year, as I had to have all the presents posted off to Australia from Canada with plenty of time to spare in case Quarantine took their sweet time rifling through the souvenir t-shirts, Turtles chocolates and zany (or possibly whacky or kooky, I can't quite recall) Japanese toys.

Now, although my present shopping is still not quite finished, I got my priorities right and my Christmas gift baking has been taken care of. Following the disorganised theme of my life right now, I was sitting on my couch watching Futurama on Wednesday night, relaxing after a particularly plankt-tastic day at uni, and I suddenly realised that my half-formed plan to take baked treats into uni on Friday was not going to happen unless I actually baked things on Thursday. A revelation, I know. This thought was then followed (at a leisurely pace) by the realisation that if I was going to make some sort of fruit mince something then I would need to start preparing the fruit mince on Wednesday night. I mulled this thought over for a while before it struck me that it actually was Wednesday night.

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