Christmas Day (Gimme Some Sugar)...

Okay, so I didn't get a chance to do another post before Christmas - hands up who's shocked. Noone? No, I thought not. I swear, I left everything so late this year - Never Again. (or, you know, never again until next time...)

And I mean really late. Like, I started decorating my Christmas cake at 10pm on Christmas Eve. Luckily the design I had decided on was a simple one, so it was actually doable:

And then I forgot to take a photo of it before I stuck a knife in it. Sigh. Still cute though, right?

NB: The idea for the "North Pole" sign came from "the decorated cookie", although she used a lollipop stick with washi tape, whereas I used a candy cane with the curved part chopped off.

Other goodies we enjoyed on the day included a pavlova with lemon cream and cherry syrup, topped with fresh cherries and raspberries...

The idea for the pavlova's unusual shape was taken from my Donna Hay magazine, where it was called a "Christmas Wreath" pavlova (although hers had a totally different flavour profile).

And yes, it's a terrible photo - I'm sorry about that, but that's the trouble with not being able to take photos at night... (Although guess what? Thanks to my beloved husband, I Now Can!!! More on that later...)

My four year old daughter and I also decorated a gingerbread house this year:

I'm a bit ashamed to say it is an IKEA flat-pack model - but there is a reason for that! I was totally going to bake my own house to decorate with The Muffin. Then I saw that IKEA was having a decorating competition with their flat-pack version, so I thought I'd do two - an IKEA one by myself (in order to attempt to Win The Competition), and a "proper" one to decorate with The Muffin. So I bought one. Flash forward to a week before Christmas, the competition deadline had passed me by, I still hadn't finished my Christmas shopping, and I had four other desserts still to make for Christmas. So I devised a cunning Revised Plan: Bugger Having Two Gingerbread Houses, Stick With The Prefab.

Anyway, with the pressure suddenly turned off, The Muffin and I had such fun decorating this, and my mum joined in too. This side of the house (the front) is the most stylish, so I'm sure our little house wouldn't have won any awards! But that's not really the point, is it? The point is, I had fun with my little girl, and we both ate too many lollies. And what could be more Christmassy than that?

Hope you and yours had a fabulous Christmas, and that Santa was good to you (he certainly was to me!)