Christmas has started.

I love the idea of Christmas and always get sucked into buying a Christmas magazine in October and making lots of lists at the same time. By November I totally can’t wait but once December arrives, and the work has to start in earnest, I just don’t feel up to the job. 

This year hubB has been home from work ill, the weather has been wet and cold, any number of excuses have been found and my procastination has known no bounds. Most of my lists are not only uncompleted but lost to boot! 

With only a week to go we decided to join friends at a Christmas church celebration. Now I’m not at all religious and having attended another friends baptism only last month I’ve already been more this year than I usually look to. 

My friend was attending the 9.15 service and as the church in question is in our nearest city, it meant an early start. The weather was cold and frosty and at the last minute my friend texted to say her whole family were down with some horrible lurgy. We were on our own!

The first clue that the service was different came when we pulled off the main road to be met by traffic cones and attendants to control the traffic. This was no village church or small scale service, this had all the hallmarks of a full scale event. 

The entrance was full of friendly smiling people greeting us with Christmas cheer. The quantity of people wouldn’t have looked out of place at a concert. 

The hall was no less than an auditorium and it was full by the time the service started. 

Miss C was very taken by the jokes on the main screen. HubB was impressed by the full choir and live band. The mixing booth with spot lights, countdown and full crew impressed me. 

We sang our hearts out, as did everyone else there. We clapped and cheered. The sermon was more a sales pitch for Jesus than a Bible reading. The live entertainment and screen production may have been members of the congregation but they could easily have been professionals. It was like no other church service I’ve ever been to. 

I may not be taking up nightly Bible reading anytime soon but I certainly feel much more christmassy and excited for the whole season now.

I’m so in the Christmas spirit I used some of my mincemeat to make a few mince pies. 6 dozen to be correct. I’m Christmas ready! 

Christmas cake leftovers.

I found this tub of leftover Christmas cake on the side this morning. In the back of my mind I knew it was there but we still have a lump of the main one left so I’ve been ignoring it. I don’t make a cake usually as it always gets fed to the birds around now.

Well this year will be different. Bring on Pinterest. Unfortunately that was no help. I found a brownie Xmas cake recipe after much searching  but it was tooth decayingly sweet. I know I’ll make my own……

Using the standard brownie recipe idea I melted 175g each of butter and chocolate. Beat 3 eggs together with 150g of sugar and stirred in the cooled chocolate mix.

To this I added 75g plain flour, 40g cocoa powder and 200g of crumbled Christmas cake. (The small cakes weighed 100g each it seemed, it wasn’t science!)

Gave it all a good mix and poured into a  20cm square cake tin. I baked at 160° for about 30 minutes. I can’t be more precise than that as I didn’t remember to set the timer. Moved straight on to the next thing and forgot them for a while.

I always like to make a number of things together, at the same time and in a total panic, when I bake. I tell myself it is to use the oven more efficiently but really I just love the buzz of being under pressure.

Hubby favourite cake is apricot and white chocolate flapjack. He perhaps wouldn’t choose the white chocolate part but anything and everything is improved by adding chocolate.

Flapjack is easy.

Mix together 5oz of oats, 2oz SR flour, 4oz sugar and as many chopped apricots and chocolate chips as you think looks good.
Stir in 1tbsp golden syrup melted with 4oz butter.
Plop it into the tin and pat down.

Well while stirring it together I had a eureka moment… Christmas cake.

So I made the same recipe again but crumbled in a Xmas cake instead of apricots and chocolate.

And then I added another because it looked a bit lacking and I had so many I can!!!

At that point I remembered the brownies and took them out. I turned up the oven to 180° and put in the flapjacks for 15 minutes.

Now i might work in a whirlwind of utensils, bowls and bother but I always wash up while the last thing is baking. My kitchen isn’t very big and I need all the space I can get for cooling the end result

I could and would put everything in the dishwasher. I have a belief that if something isn’t dishwasher safe it’s not the thing for me. However this bowl is the exception that breaks my rule.

Used by my mum and her mum before her. It holds  history in its very existence. It makes me think of Sunday afternoons and making rock cakes, standing on a chair until I could reach the work surface unaided. Of my grandad showing me how to lift the flour and let it fall to rub in. Of my mum patiently washing and picking through the dried fruit before we used it. We made other things but rock cakes were my cakes and how very proud of them I always felt, as they sat on the plate at teatime.

If there’s any left this will be tonight’s tea time treat.

A day of treats.

In a bid to avoid maths Miss C declared that she thought she could bake cakes without any help from yours truly.
She spent a little while finding a recipe and with only minimum input made a tray of fairy cakes.

While she waited for them to cook I suggested she have a play with some fondant icing we had. There were two reasons. One she was totally engaged and I didn’t want to lose that. More importantly I had two blocks of icing left from Halloween and one from Christmas.
I had had great intentions of making pumpkin and witches cats for the Halloween cupcakes. I ran out of time and settled for buttercream swirls in orange and black instead so now I have lots of short date fondant, and it’s not the sort I could feed to the bees so it’s got to be used.

We started slowly. Neither of us really knowing what to make. Then Miss C started to experiment.

She made a penguin and then a cat.

A whole plate full followed. The bee is mine, I never claimed to be artistic!

I did make some flowers. Miss C made a few more…

and a better bee. Just to show me how it was done. That one’s so thick it is guaranteed to give tooth decay instantly I think.

Then we piped the rest as time was drawing on.

Just as we were finishing there was a knock on the door. A large delivery box

and some wonderful cranberry plants ordered only last week arrived.

I’m not sure the photo does them credit. They are well rooted and bigger than I expected. After all I only paid £3.95 each for them from CJ Wildlife.
http://www.birdfood.co.uk which is a great price compared to other places I’ve looked. I just have to hope they grow now!

I am so excited about the garden this year.  Lots of good things to look forward to, and cake for tea!

Blackcurrant jam and burnt fingers.

There’s always sugar in a beekeepers home. I only had half a sack from the bee buddy last year but still didn’t use it all. I’m happier that way, I consider autumn forage to be much healthier and never take late honey.

Now we are approaching the new season I’m starting to clear the freezer and replaced diminished pantry stores.

I’m out of jam (I’ve had to buy a jar in a shop.  Heavens above that’s not good housewifely!) I adore red onion chutney.
Today I made both.

The blackcurrants are from the garden via the freezer. We had loads again last year and there’s only so many things I can think to make.

This book came from Woolworths probably 20+ years ago. I’ve used it lots and the results are always good. It’s also a WI book so it doesn’t use fancy ingredients and extra add ins. Which I probably wouldn’t have, having not pre planned this.

I halved the recipe, who needs 10lb of blackcurrant jam when there is only 3 people in the house. (The servants have all done a runner it seems. Just little old me left!)

2lb frozen blackcurrants and 1 1\2 pint water heated in a pan. Reduce by 1\3. Add 3lb sugar, warmed in the oven first.
Always best to boil as little as possible after sugar so fruit stays fresh tasting.

I used a jam thermometer. I’ve had it ages and only when washing up today did I find you can slide the hook on the back down. Thus letting you clip it to the side of the pan. I wondered how everyone else managed when you see them on programmes happily using both hands.
‘Oh dear embarrassing’, as Miss C would say.

I jarred it using my largest measuring cup. After dropping it in once, and burning my fingers picking it out, you would imagine I would not make the same mistake twice.
You just don’t know me. I blame the blonde hair dye. Whoops.