Merry Christmas

No words, just my pictures from Christmas 2015!

Sent from my niece Zoë in Canada. She made the pink snowgirl just for me!

Stuffing

I'm a bit of a newbie at making Christmas turkey. Someone else usually makes it! This year my family came over for Christmas eve dinner so it was my turn to present the turkey. I got myself a 3.5kg free-range bird and I figured the huge cavity inside needed to be stuffed!

STUFFING

 Fry a large chopped onion in a bit of butter and olive oil until soft. Add 2 cloves crushed garlic. Remove from heat.

 When cool, add 1 box of Krummies breadcrumbs, 3 eggs, the juice of 1 lemon, 1 cup slivered almonds, chopped parsley and salt and pepper to taste.

Stuff the turkey! Pour a bit of water in the bottom of the tray.
Cover the wing tips and leg tips with foil and bake at 160 C for 2-3 hours depending on the size.
Test the internal temperature - it is done at 74 C.

Gingerbread Cake

I'm not the hugest fan of Christmas cakes - I only like fruit cake/pudding if it's swimming in copious amounts of custard. This year I wanted to make a cake suitable for Christmas that didn't have fruit in it. I had just made some gingerbread to give to my Secret Santa (you can see the recipe here), so I thought, what if I made this in cake form? I'm glad I did!

GINGERBREAD CAKE

Mix together 2 cups of plain flour with 2 tsp baking soda and 1 tsp baking powder.
Add 3 tsp cinnamon, 3 tsp ginger powder, 1 tsp ground cloves and 1 tsp salt.

Beat together 1/2 block unsalted butter with 3/4 cup dark brown sugar. Add 2 eggs and 3/4 cup molasses.

Alternately add your dry ingredients with 1 cup of buttermilk.

Bake at 160C for about 40 minutes or whenever a skewer comes out clean.

I made a simple glaze of icing sugar and milk, but I think butterscotch sauce would be PERFECT for this.
Simply melt 1 cup of cream, 1 cup brown sugar and 100g butter in a pan.

Salted Caramel Fudge

I got an e-mail from Claire of Claire K Creations about participating in #foodiesecretsanta again. A fun gift exchange she organised, where Australian food bloggers make a treat for 3 other randomly allocated food bloggers. I could not believe it was already that time of year again! You can see my post for #foodiesecretsanta last year here.

I have a confession to make. I was not as organised for it as I was last year. I had a vague idea of making fudge this year, and I'd made a mental note of the deadline for posting the gifts. One afternoon I saw I had a package. I froze and had a moment of panic - had I missed the posting deadline!? I quickly checked my e-mail to thankfully find out I hadn't... but I had 4 days. Was that enough time to see if I can make fudge for the first time? I sure hoped so!

I read recipes and watched videos. I decided I wanted to make caramel fudge. I absolutely love caramel and I didn't think I was ready to try chocolate fudge just yet! After a bit of research, I discovered that there is actually a science to fudge, much like candy-making. I tried a couple of techniques - eyeballing the texture, and even using a candy thermometer! One batch was hard, grainy crumbs. One batch was runny slop.

I finally decided on a technique where I put on a timer and cross my fingers. It seemed to work for me - TWICE! I just hope it's edible enough for my 3 (un?)lucky #foodiesecretsanta recipients!

SALTED CARAMEL FUDGE
The ingredients I decided worked for me are:
1/2 a block of chopped unsalted butter
1 cup dark brown sugar

1 can sweetened condensed milk
150g chopped white chocolate
3-4 tablespoons of golden syrup
2 tablespoons of glucose syrup

First, line a brownie tin with baking paper.
Then chop your white chocolate finely. I liked using Cadbury Dream white chocolate because it's delicately soft and melts easily.
For convenience, use white chocolate chips - although I found these didn't melt as easily.

Place all the ingredients EXCEPT the white chocolate into a large pot.
I feel a large pot is better to provide more surface area of heat.
Stir over low heat until everything is melted and dissolved.

As soon as you see the first bubble when it starts to boil, set your timer to 10 minutes.

Get those muscles working because you must stir constantly during the 10 minutes!
No need to be precise, just keep the caramel moving so that it doesn't burn at the bottom of the pan.
During this time it will gradually thicken.

The texture is right when you can briefly (like 2 seconds) scrape the caramel from the sides of the pot like in this picture.

This is where you'll need to work fast. Immediately remove the pot from the heat then throw in the white chocolate.
Beat it in with all your might! Your aim is to melt all the white chocolate.
This can be difficult as the fudge will cool down quickly and start to set.
This is why chopping the white chocolate is important!
Quickly scrape the contents into your lined brownie tin.
The quicker you work, the easier it will be to spread the fudge into the tin before it becomes too stiff.

After a few minutes, grind some sea salt over the surface.
Pop into the fridge overnight to set the fudge. I left it uncovered to help dry it out.

 Slice into squares. You should get about 60, depending on how big you slice.

Choc-Chip Chocolate Cookies

Choc-chip chocolate cookies. Try saying that 3 times fast! I have this weird thing where when I'm eating a white choc & macadamia cookie, I feel a tiny bit annoyed when I bite into a macadamia nut when I think it's white chocolate. I know, it's so weird, but it happens every time! Oh the deception!

So no mucking around with nuts here, I decided to make chocolate cookies with white choc-chips thrown in. White, because milk or dark simply wouldn't look as pretty in photographs! The texture was somewhere between a cookie and a brownie... if you're into that sort of thing!

CHOC-CHIP CHOCOLATE COOKIES

Melt together 150g butter, 3/4 cup caster sugar & 3/4 cup dark brown sugar over medium heat.
Set aside to cool for a minute then add 2 eggs.

While cooling your wet ingredients further, get your dry ingredients.

Combine just under 2 cups plain flour, 4 tbsp cocoa, 1/2 tsp baking soda & 1/2 tsp salt.

If the mixture is too runny, add a little more flour.

Combine the wet & dry ingredients, followed by 1 cup of chocolate chips.

I added the choc-chips after spooning the cookies onto the trays.
I personally like seeing the chips point upwards and hold their shape!

Bake at 160C (fan-forced) for 10 minutes or so then cool on a rack.

Vanilla Cupcakes

I have a bad habit of wanting and buying things just because they're pink. I also want to eat things just cause they have sprinkles on them (e.g. fairy bread). So I whipped up these babies just so I could put sprinkles on them!

VANILLA CUPCAKES
Beat together 1/2 a block of unsalted butter and 1 cup caster sugar.

Add 2 eggs, one at a time, followed by 1 tbsp vanilla extract.

Alternate between adding 1 and 3/4 cups self-raising flour and 3/4 - 1 cup milk (depending on how dry the batter is).
Spoon into cupcake cases 2/3 full.
Because I was lazy I over-filled the 12 cases in my tin and ended up with muffin tops.
(I had enough batter to make 13 or 14 cupcakes)

Bake at 160 C and check at around 25 minutes with a skewer.

Prior to icing, cut off your muffin tops so you have a flat surface.
This is why not over-filling with batter is so important!

I topped these babies with cream cheese icing.
Simply beat together 1/2 a block of unsalted butter, 1/2 a block of cream cheese (both at room temperature) with 500g icing sugar.
Add 1 tbsp vanilla extract and add a bit of milk if the icing is too stiff.