Christmas Baking Projects Roundup
I know that it's 6 days past Christmas but in our household, Christmas is celebrated throughout the month of December. So this year I went into a baking frenzy for Christmas, and her's a roundup of what's been cooking in my kitchen.
I started with a lovely Cranberry Citrus Buttermilk Cake. I love cooking with fresh (frozen) cranberries and I wait all year long for it to reach our supermarket freezers in December. I love the burst of red colour and tangy falvour it gives to otherwise sweet cakes. This cake has orange zest that's rubbed into the caster sugar prior to creaming with butter, the abrasive sugar bringing out the orange oils which gives the cake a lovely citrus frangrance and colour. There's also buttermilk in this cake. I love using buttermilk and yogurt in cakes as it gives cakes a better texture - moist and crumbly. If you'd like the recipe for this cake, please let me know by leaving a comment below.
Next up was a White Nectarine Cranberry Jam and Cranberry Applesauce. I bought seasonal white nectarines for this. I prefer white nectarines as they have a lovely perfume compared to the straight and sweet yellow nectarine. White nectarines wil give your jam a very light pink tint so I added cranberries for the extra colour and tang. I find pectin not necessary if I just continue to cook the fruit down to a jammy consistency. The Cranberry Applesauce is even easier. Just peel, core and cube the apples and cook them down to a mushy pulp then add the cranberries and cook them down too. Use a variety of apples - Granny Smith for higher content of natural pectin that will thicken your sauce, and red apples for sweetness. Trust me, I didn't need to add any sweetener to this.
Then I had a biggish order of Christmas Cookies that were bagged up as seasonal corporate gifts. These were quite fun to make and decorate, and were delicious too. I had fun playing with the different shapes and decorating with white and red royal icing.
I bought a Cookie Tree Kit this year and of course I couldn't wait to use it. Simple sugar cookies were used and there was plenty of cut out cookie centres for us to munch on ourselves. Again, fun to decorate and assemble :-)
Homemade chocolates are a pretty thing to make as Christmas gifts. I love making edible gifts as they are made with love and in my opinion, more heartfelt. Homemade chocolates can be easy, or a little more tricky if you temper it. But it is also fun as you can put whatever filling you fancy inside. If you don't temper your chocolate (melt, mould and fill) then you will need to keep your ready chocolates refridgerated as they will melt easier. If you take the care to temper them (heated then brought down to a precise temperature) then they will have a nice gloss and stay unmelted in room temperature (not in the Melbournian heatwave tho). I made three varieties - white chocolate with dried cranberries, milk chocolate with cashew nut, and dark chocolate with almond. I still have extras in my fridge which I'm enjoying slowly :-)
I also fancied making my own Gingerbread House this year so when I saw a gingerbread house kit in Aldi I couldn't pass it up. I have to say that this was tricky. It was tricky to keep the cut out pieces from getting mishapened or shortened or lengthened when transferring from counter to baking sheets, and it was also pretty tricky to decorate and hold and wait for the icing to set like glue. I left the fun part of decorating to my kids as they fancied it. I must say it wasn't bad for our first attempt, and I will definitely practice this in the coming years with more candy and more intricate decorating.
The second last item was a Star Cookies Christmas Tree that I've also been wanting to make for a long time. So when I saw the kit at Aldi I just couldn't pass it up too. Using just a rather crumbly sugar cookie recipe, the tree is made up of 4 cookies of 6 different sizes each. Just cut, bake, decorate, and assemble. The fun bit was also the many cookie centres that we could eat up ourselves before serving day :-)
And for the last item, Mince Pies, which have become somewhat of a favourite of mine. I think if you love fruitcake, you would naturally love mince pies too. It's pastry, what's not to love? I love this recipe with homemade cranberry-studded mincemeat. It is nowhere near as sickly sweet as the ones in the stores. Petite pop-in-your-mouth sizes, these are dangerously addictive.
And that's it for this year. I love what I do. Feliz Navidad!
