Merry Christmas?

Lloyd and I thought we'd have an attempt at a funny family christmas card, but trying to wrangle three large dogs, into a photo is pretty difficult, especially as the more we try, the more excited they get!

But it was really funny, and they had a right good laugh ~ but as the saying goes, never work with kids or animals! Suffice to say we didn't manage to get a group shot! But we did manage to make some silly cards.

Anyway, here are some outtakes for your enjoyment!!

Handstand?

Hahahahahahaaaa! (Brodie)

Still hahahahahaaa! (Brodie)

MMMMmmmm tasty antlers...

Bob really loves his daddy.

So, the cards we sent...

and

We like them, anyway!

The driftwood tree!

It was a bit more of a guddle than I  thought it would be.
At first I had planned to string the bits of driftwood together, rather like a mobile so that they would hang in a tree shape. After hours of drilling holes and tying bits of string all over the place it just wasn't going to work. So I left it for a few days and had a wee strop.

Then plan B was devised with a little help from my friend, Cath, who pointed me in the direction of Command Strips. I'd never heard of these! But they are amazing sticky things. They cost almost as much as it would cost to buy a flipping tree, but the finished article pleases me greatly!

And bonus! In a teeny, tiny living room, because its on the wall, it takes up no space at all!!

see what I did there? twinkly!!

Christmas Cake ~ Part Three

Marzipan and icing!


First the marzipan was rolled out then placed gently over the cake. Oh! I melted some guava jelly and brushed the cake with it so that the marzipan would stick. It did.

 Next the icing was rolled out and gently placed on top of the marzipan. I brushed the marzipan with water to make the icing stick.

A bit of trimming and tidying up.

Next I made a fondant border. Not the neatest but not a total disaster either.

Had to cut out what felt like a gazillion holly leaves!

Ta'dah!

Finished off with some glitter, cos a girl can never have too much glitter, especially at Christmas!

Christmas Cake ~ Part 2

The fruit has been in the fridge for 2 days, soaking up all the lovely orange juice and sherry. Today I took it out and finished the cake.

• For the cake:

• 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 3 large eggs, at room temperature
• ¾ cup ground almonds
• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 ½ tsp baking powder
• ¼ tsp salt
• ¼ cup + ½ cup sweet sherry or brandy
• 1 cup chopped pecans

So, here's all the ingredients laid out.  I always do this when I bake. Makes me feel organised!

Method
Preheat the oven to 140°C and grease 2 9-inch round cake pans. ( I don't have 2 9 inch cake pans, so I used 2 8 inch ones. This made a thicker cake, which I like better)

Beat the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in the ground almonds.

In a separate bowl, sift the flour, baking powder and salt and stir this into the batter. Stir in ¼ cup of the sherry or brandy. Fold the chopped pecans into the batter then add the soaked fruits, stirring well to coat the fruit.

Spoon this into the prepared pans and spread to level. If you wish, arrange pecans on the top of the cakes in a ring. Bake the cakes for 2 hours and 15 minutes, ( mine were ready at 2 hours) until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.

While still hot from the oven, brush the tops of the fruitcakes with some of the remaining ½ cup of sherry or brandy. Brush again one or 2 more times as the cakes cool, then remove the cakes from their pans and wrap well.

The fruitcakes will keep for up to 8 weeks in a cool place, or can be frozen for up to 6 months.

Pecans being stirred into the sugar and butter mixture.

Fruit being folded in

MMmmm all together!

All wrapped up. This is because the cake needs to be in the oven for a long time. You don't want the sides or top to burn.

There's a fair amount of washing up to be done!

The finished cakes!

The smell while these were cooking was amazing. We had run out of sherry, so I basted them with Madeira. I ordered some holly, fondant cutters yesterday and they arrived already!  I'm going to decorate one of them for christmas day. Marzipan and fondant icing! yummy!

Christmas Cake!

Lloyd and I are having Christmas here this year. So we decided to actually make our christmas cake, and do it together.   A few weeks ago we were watching Anna Olson on tv and thought her cake looked pretty delicious. Today we headed into Kerikeri to get all the fruity ingredients. Now, having bought everything, I would never suggest that this is a cheap way of getting a Christmas cake! But we're hoping it will be the best Christmas cake ever!

Recipe

Ingredients

For the fruit:

• 1 cup diced candied orange peel
• 1 cup sultanas
• 1 cup dried cranberries
• 1 cup chopped pitted prunes
• 1 cup chopped candied pineapple
• ½ cup dried currants
• ½ cup dried cherries
• ¼ cup finely chopped crystallized ginger
• 1 cup sweet sherry or brandy
• ½ cup orange juice
• 1 tbsp finely grated orange zest
• 1 tbsp finely grated lemon zest
• 1 tbsp finely grated fresh ginger

This is the stage we have reached for today...

(We couldn't get dried cherries so we used glace cherries - we both love them, anyway! And we also added some dates because they were just being delivered and the lady let us taste them and they were amazing!)

Candied peel and sultanas

 Dried cranberries

Glace cherries, and prunes added

 Pineapple, currants, ginger and zest...

Sherry and orange juice

A good old moosh around ( Lloyd did this bit by hand)  then I covered it and it was put in the fridge - this recipe says overnight, or up to three days. Stirring occasionally. I think we'll only do it until tomorrow afternoon. This way we can finish it together too.

We're waiting with baited breath now..... stay tuned!

Happy (belated) Christmas!

We've had the best - but busiest - time over Christmas. Lots of friends visiting here and lots of us visiting friends elsewhere.

Christmas Day was just lovely.
Lloyd and I woke up and had a wee glass of champagne then a breakfast of home made eggs benedict - this is a bit of a tradition.

After that it was pressie opening time. Santa was very good to us!
Lloyd got a gun of all things - a farm gun, though. Sadly our rabbit population has reached shocking numbers, so rabbit pie will be on the menu rather a lot this year! I still sneakily save baby rabbits if the cats are chasing them. I gather them up and hide them in the oak tree, but I do whisper to them that their days are numbered...

I got a huge surprise when I opened my present - a new camera! Lloyd had managed to get this without me having an inkling! I've been reading the manual and trying it out with just the wee ordinary lens on it - want to learn a bit before I start using all my good lenses! It is amazing! I am very lucky. Thank you Lloydy xx

In the afternoon of Christmas Day, we headed over to Dan's house. He had his family there, so it was lovely of him to include us in their day. We had the best time and laughed and laughed!

For the last couple of days I've tried to have a rest! Lots of photos have been taken!
This is one of my favourites. Banana was washing himself. If you look closely you can see his wee face between his front legs!

And here's presents we were given by very talented friends!
Isla is a ceramicist and is an incredibly talented artist. She gave us these stunning bowls. And Ness can turn her hand to anything and made Lloyd this lamp out of a piece of driftwood that washed ashore at the beach!!

I treated myself to these alphabet stamps. I've become rather addicted to pinterest and saw that someone had used these stamps to make garden markers - all you need are these and some clay... I'll keep you posted on how I get on (clay was ordered this morning)

So, I hope you all had as lovely a Christmas as we did,  and that you ate too much, spent time with loved ones and laughed a lot.

I love Hydrangeas!

I know a lot of people think of them as "old lady' flowers, but I really, really like them. Every year I wait with baited breath for the first ones to flower. I've even gone so far as to pot some in their own pots so I can keep them certain colours. If left to their own devices in our garden, they would go pale blue. I have one that is a dark purply blue and one that is slightly lilac, but their colour of choice is pale blue. I like pale blue a lot, but love a bit of variation.

See, gorgeous!

The garden has really come into its own this year as regards flowers. Even my roses have gone wild.
I found a scabby old bit of flower shop oasis yesterday so decided to see what I could do with it. The roses smell amazing!
And oasis is my new best friend!

And finally I put up the Christmas tree. I really wanted to get a white one, as it was a white one we always had when we were growing up so it has sentimental memories. What I didn't think/realise was that all my lovely old vintage glass decorations are totally invisible in a white tree, so next year it'll be back to a green one and we'll put the white one up in the woolshed...

Oh and yesterday I actually made mince pies. Absolutely going to do this again every year, they are so much better than shop bought ones!

This afternoon a crown of us are off to see The Hobbit. I'm really looking forward to it. I've lost count of how many times I've read the book.

A little bit of Christmas yumminess!

 I haven't made any cupcakes for a while and I keep seeing pictures of cupcakes that look like Christmas trees so I decided to try my hand at some.
And I'm really pleased with them.

I decided on some gingerbread cupcakes.

Here's what I did

Recipe

• 150 g butter room temperature
• 150 g soft brown sugar
• 3 eggs ( I used 4 as mine are pretty small)
• 150 g self-raising flour
•  3 tsp ground ginger - I like them gingery and you could definitely add even more) 
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• pinch freshly grated nutmeg
• 1 tbsp milk
  

  Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/ gas 4.
  
  2. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
  
  3. Sift the flour together with the spices.
  
  3. Gradually mix the eggs into the creamed butter and sugar alternating with the flour to stop the mix from curdling. Finally, stir through the milk. DO NOT BREAK AN EGG SHELL INTO THE MIX like I did!
  
  4. Place 12 paper cupcake cases into a muffin tin and divide the mixture between them.
  
  5. Bake for 30 minutes until golden and springy to the touch. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack.  
•  
• For the frosting
• 200 g butter, at room temperature
• 3 tbsp milk
• 250 g icing sugar
• green good colouring 
• I used a 1M tip for the icing and mounded it up like a tree then put some silver balls on and bits of glittery stuff.

 

They're lovely and moist and do taste of Christmas! I'll definitely make more.