Christmas Past

Happy New Year, kittens! It was a few weeks ago, but here are some photos from Christmas, when all I did was eat a lot and have marathon sessions of movie-and-TV-show-watching. 

A rather unfortunate gingerbread man fell into my coffee. 

We had homemade gingerbread biscuits for breakfast on Christmas morning, made with the recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. I like my gingerbread really spicy, so I always add twice as much ginger to the recipe when making. 

Cheesy Tim Tams

Cheesy Tim Tams, that's right. The aforementioned biscuits were a gift from Ari, who purchased them while in Indonesia early this year. It took me about 6 months of looking at it gingerly before I dared crack open the packet. In the end, it was Manbacon who actually opened in and took the first bite. 

'Oh, it's not too bad...' was what he said. Well...it wasn't too bad, but it wasn't good either. For something with so much eurgh-potential, it was disappointingly nondescript. Meh indeed. The Tim Tams just didn't taste like anything, really. Not much cheese flavour, and that lame faintly chocolate-y taste you get from white chocolate products. 

See those orange insides that promised all sorts of fake-cheese flavour? Well, there was none. It was all rather cardboardy and yep, nondescript tasting (I don't think I've ever felt 'nondescript' to be such an apt descriptive for food before). Also, I don't know if you can tell, but these biscuits were tiny - maybe two-thirds of the size of a normal Tim Tam. They also failed the all-important straw test. I think the cheesy insides made them too dense and impervious to liquid being suck through. Well, Cheese Tim Tams, I won't be buying any more of you should I visit Indonesia (unless someone specifically requests them as a souvenir). 

Sugardaddy Cakes

Something tasty will be happening at the Tea Rooms this weekend. The Bake Club boys and I are teaming up to start a new cake stall, serving plenty of homemade goodies. If you're around Brick Lane this weekend, why not come over to say hello, and have some tea and biscuits? 

Christmas!

It's taken a while, but I'm finally getting round to posting photos of my Christmas feast. We decided to have it at home this time, and celebrated it on Christmas Eve with the delightful Miss Kitty Valentine, my cushion-making partner in crime Aldona and her family.

In true over-the-top Polish tradition, our dinner consisted of at least 12 dishes (since I'm not actually Polish, I don't know if it is true that a Polish Christmas dinner has to include 12 dishes, it's just what I've been told.) 

The coffee table had an array of sweets - (from top), homemade panforte, a quince, ginger and walnut cake based on this recipe, and some untraditionally shaped gingerbread biscuits (gingerbread T-rex, anyone?). Aldona also brought along some makowiec (poppyseed cake) and more biscuits.

The star of the night, a perfectly roasted goose! Manbacon (who can be partially seen behind the bird) cooked the goose himself, following a great recipe by the Hairy Bikers. He also managed to rustle up succulent salt beef, as well as plenty of delicious apple and pork stuffing. 

£10 notes to wipe our greasy hands and lips on, because we're hedonists and filthy rich. You can't see it, but we also had a stack of £20 and £50 note-napkins. 

Wild mushroom dumplings in beetroot soup (above), as well as some bigos, plenty of cured pork products, some marinated herrings, and possibly some other stuff as well. 

The aftermath - empty vodka bottles, half-finished bowls of soups and stews, burnt-out candles, crumpled napkins and wrapping paper, plenty of half-eaten food, and one stained tablecloth. Our guests were sent away with boxes stuffed full of food. 

Gingerbread Trials

Tried out a gingerbread recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook as part of my Christmas dinner preparations. It's pretty tasty and includes treacle (one of my favourite ingredients), but requires more ginger, in this opinion of this ginger-lover. I know gingerbread man is the traditional shape, but gingerbread llamas are pretty fantastic too, no? 

The gingerbread tribute to Munch's Scream and the slightly misformed Bat Signal were both produced by Manbacon himself, budding confectionery artiste extraordinaire. 

P.S. Not really related but does anyone have a good recipe for creme brulee? I'm a bit obsessed after my trip to Glasgow and a visit to the Two Fat Ladies restaurant. More on that soon. 

Zesty Orange Crisps

Spring's arrival has brought with it a craving for orange. It could be because of the longer, brighter days, or it could my body telling me I need more vitamins - I'm hardly ever in the sun enjoying the longer, brighter days, after all (and my pasty, glow-in-the-dark legs are testament to that.)

Whatever the reason, I'm hardly one to say no to desserts, especially fruity ones. What to make this time, though? I'm not really a fan of orange-flavoured chocolates (sorry, Terry's) - I find them a little too cloying - and I just made an orange cake not too long ago. Well, how about biscuits then? A quick and impatient Google search didn't throw up many recipes that grabbed me, so I thought I'd indulge in an experiment instead. 

Orange Crisps

Ingredients
(makes about 40 biscuits)

150gm caster sugar
150gm butter, softened
225gm plain flour
1 tbsp vanilla extract
grated rind of 1 orange
2 tbsps orange juice

Directions
- Cream sugar and butter until fluffy. Add in vanilla extract, orange zest and juice.

- Stir in flour, knead mixture lightly, roll into a 2 inch wide sausage shape, wrap it in greaseproof paper or clingfilm and freeze for at least 30 minutes.

- Preheat oven to 175 C, and take the biscuit mixture out of the freezer. Slice off fairly thin pieces (I made mine about 3mm thick) and place them on a greased baking tray. Leave some space inbetween, as they will spread a little while in the oven.

- Bake for about 6-8 minutes, until lightly golden and remove from oven to cool.

At this stage, you can eat them as they are, or make a glaze to drizzle over them. I only made a glaze for them because I wanted to pretty up some burnt ones, so it's not strictly necessary, but it does help finish up the rest of the juice from your zested and squeezed orange.

Glaze
50gm icing sugar
2tbsp orange juice

Directions
- Mix icing sugar and orange juice until you get a runny consistency, then drizzle the mixture over the biscuits with a fork. Leave to set, then enjoy!

They can be stored in an airtight box for up to a week (if you can resist them for that long!).

Goodies

Lovely Ai sent me another package recently, full of new goodies. The blue packet of 'cigarettes' actually contains candy - I haven't tried them yet, but I think they may be similar to 'Fads' back in Australia (once known as 'Fags'). 

Well-Made cheese crackers, in Quattro Formaggio flavour - you know what, they really are well-made. Crunchy and intensely buttery, and pretty much perfect.

An Exchange

Ai of the delicious blog it will stop raining put out a call a few weeks ago about having a food swap. Having been a fan of the blog for a while, I was only too glad to take part in it and send her a package. This was the package I received from her on Saturday.

 Hello Kitty stamp! And that cute little bumblebee-dude on the right is just so happy!

 This photo is making me want an ice-cream so badly - who cares if it's freezing over here right now?!

 Goodies - chocolate biscuits, shiruko biscuits, and grape flavoured chewing gum.

 My favourite flavour of gum, and pretty much the only flavour I'll eat (I'll take apple flavoured gum too).

The shiruko biscuits come individually packaged. Inside each one is a sweet cracker, with a layer of red bean sandwiched inside. They are so delicious and more-ish, but I'm trying to ration them so they last longer.

Entertainment!

Or - What I Did When My Computer Wasn't Feeling Well.

Made a mountain of cream cheese biscuits, topped with citrus peel and berry jam. Soft and fluffy, like an edible pillow.

Made a dent in the mountain of acrylic yarn I seem to have collected, by starting a colourful granny-square blanket. It's the blanket that warms you twice - once when you're making it, once when you're snuggling under it. 

Befriended a couple of lovely ladybirds in contrasting colours. Things have been going rather badly this month, so I took the fact that I saw two of them within two days as a sign of upcoming good fortune.

Played around with some of the treasures I picked up about a month ago. I made little baskets out of them (they're about an inch tall, and less than that in width) and crocheted little chains for them, topped with a button. They make excellent holders for little treasures like bottle caps, little nutmen, and  erm, other stuff. 

Made more zipper purses, to be posted on Etsy soon. These are from a pair of old linen shorts (they've been washed!) and some scrap floral fabric.

Christmas Colours

Christmas celebrations invariably involve eating your own body weight through a mountain of food, and I certainly did my part this year. Christmas Eve dinner was held at A+B's cosy flat in East London, where we proceeded to slowly but steadily work our way through a 12-course Polish dinner. The Mancreature tells me that it's traditional for Polish families to stuff their faces with 12 different dishes during Christmas dinner, so we took that as an excuse to eat til we nearly threw up.

I made up a tower of quince pies and lots of little Russian tea cakes to add to the party, while the Mancreature made little dumplings called uzska - little ears - and also roasted a great big hunk of beef. Turns out we needn't have brought those items, as there was more than enough food awaiting our rather late entrance.

We stuffed our greedy maws with plenty of pierogi, beetroot soup, bigos, marinated herrings, lots of sausages  and at least  four different cakes. In fact, there was so much food that we ended up having to take a half hour break halfway through the meal before we could go on and finish all 12 dishes. The Mancreature nearly ended up in a coma at the end of it, but that's because he didn't listen to my advice - just keep eating, and don't listen to your gut!

I know I'd promised to write up my recipe for quince pies before, but you'll just have to wait a little longer before I get round to doing it. I used this recipe for the biscuits, but omitted the icing sugar dusting and got creative with some chocolate-flavoured icing instead. It's currently one of my favourite biscuit recipes, as it takes hardly any time to mix up, and I've also discovered that the resulting biscuits keep fairly well too.

The next day - Christmas Day - was spent lazing around in our pyjamas, playing computer games and making more mushroom-filled uszkas! This time, I had the 'brilliant' idea of adding red and green food colouring to the dough, to produce a batch of Christmas-coloured dumplings. They looked like little embryos, but were so tasty right out of a hot water bath, with a little lot of butter slathered over them.  Lots of things taste great covered in butter...I love butter!

We didn't make them to a specific recipe, but you if'd like to try them out, here's a fairly simple one. Ours were stuffed with wild Polish mushrooms and onions, but I don't see why you can't stuff them with other ingredients if you feel like it. Once you've cooked them, you can keep them for a couple of days in the fridge, although we finished ours almost immediately. All 52 little ears.

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all have a great 2010!