Merry Christmas... (& Sweets for Santa!)

Here in Australia, it gets pretty hot at Christmas time.  Tomorrow is forecast to be 39 degrees Celsius.

So when it fell to me this year to make the dessert for Christmas lunch, I thought something made of icecream would be very welcome in the middle of the day!

Lately I've been a bit obsessed with gingerbread (oh yes, there has been a lot of baking going on.  Just not much blogging).  So I decided it would be rather nice to make a layered molded dessert of gingerbread and vanilla icecreams - mmm....  Ooh, and I could enter it into the latest Sweet Adventures Blog Hop!

Didn't it turn out pretty?  I was panicking a bit about getting it out of the mold before Christmas Day, but it seems to have gone back into the freezer with no problems...

If you're not thinking about licking that picture, with its chewy-crunchy gingerbread base, and deliciously frosty layers of vanilla and gingerbread creaminess, you totally should be.  Trust me.  But wait - it gets cuter.  This is what it's going to look like when it hits the table tomorrow:

Teeny gingerbread men and hearts, with a royal-iced gingerbread star, complete this treat!

So here's the recipe - and it might be too late to make it for Christmas Day, but you could definitely make either of these icecreams on their own just to eat from a bowl - the vanilla is really good, but I am very proud of the gingerbread - maybe I'm biased in favour of anything gingerbready right now, but personally I think it's sensational...

Gingerbread Icecream Tree

Vanilla Icecream
Ingredients
400mL cream
100mL whole milk
1 vanilla bean
5 egg yolks
125g caster sugar

Modus Operandi
Place cream, milk and vanilla bean in a medium sized saucepan, and heat slowly just until boiling point, then remove from heat immediately.  Meanwhile, whisk egg yolks and sugar in a bowl until pale and creamy.  Gradually add the cream mixture to the egg mixture, and continue to whisk until combined.  Transfer the mixture to a clean saucepan, and cook over low heat, stirring all the time, for around 15-20 minutes, until it coats the back of a spoon.  Do not allow to boil!  Refrigerate the mixture until cold (preferably overnight), before churning in an icecream maker.
Pour churned icecream into your chosed mold, and freeze.

Gingerbread
Ingredients
115g butter
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 egg yolk
300g sifted plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp grated nutmeg

MO
Cream the butter and sugar just until smooth.  Stir in the molasses and egg yolk.
Combine the dry ingredients and stir into the molasses mixture until smooth.  The mixture will be very soft and sticky - that's okay.  Wrap it in plastic, and chill for at least one hour.
Meanwhile, take a piece of baking paper and draw around the shape of the mold you have used for your icecream.  Cut the shape out, and put it aside.
Preheat the oven to 175C (350F).  On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to about 8mm thickness.  Using your baking paper template, cut the shape you will need for your base out of your gingerbread dough (in my case, a large Christmas tree).  Transfer the shaped gingerbread onto a lined baking tray (note:  you will make your life much easier if you keep the paper shape on the gingerbread tree shape until you have transferred it to the tray.  It will inevitably warp a little in the process, and having the paper template still there means you can smooth it back into shape before baking).  Remove the template and keep it for later.
Bake the large gingerbread in the oven until firm, and the edges are golden brown (the actual time will vary depending on the size and shape of your mold.  Mine took around 15 minutes).
Bake your small cookies for around 8-10 minutes.  Cool on trays.

When it is completely cool, move your large gingerbread shape to a board, and trim it back to the desired shape using your paper template.  Theoretically I imagine this would be easier while the gingerbread was still warm, but I wasn't game enough to move it at that stage.  Please yourself.  :o)

Gingerbread Icecream
Ingredients
600mL cream
Some of your Gingerbread cookies - I used about 90g of them (although I had some left over from my last batch, so depending on the size of your mold's base, you might need to make two batches of gingerbread if you want to decorate with them too.  Not sure... sorry.  But hey, who minds extra gingerbread around the house, am I right?)
6 egg yolks
150g light brown sugar
2 Tbsp molasses
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

MO
Exactly the same as for the vanilla icecream, but add your gingerbread cookies to your cream mixture right at the beginning.  When you remove it from the heat, strain it through a sieve.  The cookies will have turned to mush - stir it a bit to help the liquid through the sieve, but don't force it all through.  Most of the cookie mush will go through the sieve easily - any that doesn't, discard.
Add the spices and molasses to the egg/sugar mixture just before adding the cream mixture.
When the icecream is churned, pour it into the mold on top of the vanilla, and freeze.

To construct:
Take your icecream out of the freezer, and whilst it is still in the mold, press the gingerbread base firmly onto it.  Return to the freezer until it is time to serve.

At serving time, flip the icecream tree out onto your desired serving plate (it's a good idea to freeze that, too, to stop the icecream from starting to melt quite so quickly!)  Decorate as desired.


Wow, that was kind of long.  But trust me, it's totally worth it!  And after all, we all deserve to be a bit indulgent at Christmas, right?

I really hope that you and yours have a wonderful, fun, peaceful holiday season - and do check out the other Sweets For Santa at the blog hop below - this month it's being hosted by Christina over at The Hungry Australian - she did an icecream dessert too, and it looks amazing!

Weirdy (and Not-So-Weirdy) Snowman Cookies

Firstly, in the interests of full disclosure, I would like to admit that I have never even seen an actual realio-trulio snowman. There, I said it. I did make a little sort of icy slushman about thirty centimetres high once when I was little, and that was the only time I have ever been in the snow. And I was wearing shorts and a Tshirt. Yeah, we don't really do Winter-With-A-Capital-W here in Australia. And that's a good thing, 'cause I hate being cold.

But you know what? I do love snowmen. There's just something about them that can be so cute. So despite the fact that it's currently about 34 degrees Celsius here, my little girl and I decided we want in on the Snowman Celebration being held by the incredibly talented Georganne of LilaLoa...

Actually, we made these last week especially for this purpose, I just haven't had a chance to post about them yet:

Are they the most weirdy snowmen you've seen lately? I actually do have a proper snowman cutter, but thought it might be fun to try using a Christmas bauble cutter instead - thus giving my snowmen teeny little pin heads.


I think they're a bit weird, but kind of cute.

If you like your snowmen a little less peculiar, there's also these that I made last September (part of my winning Royal Show entry!):

So happy Winter to those who have it! And whether you do or not, you should definitely click on over to LilaLoa, and check out the other snowmen at the party!

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!)

The End of The Beginning

Here in Australia the end of the school year happens right about now - our long Summer holidays happen over Christmas (obviously. You know, on account of it being Summer...).

Anyway, the point is, my little girl has Finished Kindy. She'll be heading off to Pre-Primary next year. And whilst I'm actually not one of those people who says "wow, the last five years has gone so fast", I must admit that my baby is getting to be quite a big girl now!

So here are the thankyou/Christmas gifts I made for The Muffin's teachers:

The sleighs are chocolate cookies (made from LilaLoa's recipe, which is Soooo Good), held together with royal icing. To make them, I used a sleigh cutter for the sides, and a square cutter to make the little squares and rectangles I needed for the inner "box" part of the sleigh.


See?

It was actually easier than I thought it would be. I kept the decoration of the sleighs simple, as I didn't want to have to burst into tears if they all just fell to bits, but I needn't have worried.

The little sleighs are filled with home made goodies - gingerbread snowmen/trees, rum balls, lime and Malibu truffles. Also each had either a candy cane or a Starlight mint.

The kindy held a graduation morning tea to celebrate the end of kindy, so I took cupcakes:

They were white chocolate cupcakes with lemon vanilla buttercream, and I made the decorations from sugarpaste (with a little CMC added, so I guess technically modelling paste?) Please forgive my ultra-dodgy photo, clumsily doctored using Picnik! As per usual, I was in a rush and didn't get a good photo before the event...

Only two days 'til Christmas! I have one or two more yummy things up my sleeve, so hopefully I'll have time for another post before the big day... Hope your Christmas preparations are going well!

Muffin Tin Monday - Christmas Times Two

Okay, so I missed Muffin Tin Monday, again. But we didn't miss out on doing muffin tins, I've just been super disorganised busy the last week or two, what with (among other things) the END of kindy, the leadup to Christmas, and the Great Nit Debacle (oh. my. lord, I am so over washing bedding...)

So anyway, the point is, here are our muffin tins from the last two Mondays!

Last week: Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer tin:

Top Row: Carrots (reindeer food); Rudolph banana sandwich with M&M nose; All Of The Other Reindeer pasta (Elk pasta from IKEA).

Bottom Row: String cheese nibblets with Rudolph's Nose Pick (ew, just realised how that sounds...!); Yoghurt snow; Tomato sauce for dipping pasta in.

The Muffin wanted to know what the cheese nibblets were (to do with the theme). My mother (bless her little cotton socks) said "They are reindeer footprints", which my child was delighted with. Probably because Nanna said it. So thanks for that Mum, because I was drawing a blank! Probably would have said "snowballs" or something.

The After Shot:

Everything went except a few carrots.

This Week: Snowy theme (The Muffin's idea):

Top Row: Cranberries (because they are generally Christmassy); Prunes (tenuous link: Prunes are dried plums, ergo voila: Sugarplums!); Marshmallow snowman with pretzel arms.

Bottom Row: Apple salad; Snowman ham & cheese sandwich with ham & cheese details; Yoghurt snow (again. Yes, we are getting mileage out of "yoghurt snow" this year. But today it was All Sparkly And Glittery, although you can't see it in the photo.).

The After Shot:


This tin heralded the beginning of our school holiday MTMs. This means that this tin was The Muffin's lunch, rather than just a snack. I was mildly surprised she left some salad. I know, this shouldn't seem surprising, but The Muffin actually loves this salad (it's the only one she does like, mind you, so don't go getting all jealous or anything). All it is, is grated apple and carrot, plus chopped English spinach leaves, with a squeeze of lemon juice. Super healthy, and normally she scoffs it. The apple and lemon makes it quite sweet, so it's a good way to get some raw vegetables into non-salad eaters. I think this tin was just a lot of food for her, to be honest.

To see what other mums fed their small people this week (and indeed last week), why not head over to The Muffin Tin Mom's blog?

This is our last tin before Christmas Day, so if anyone actually has enough leisure time to read this before the Big Day, Merry Christmas! Hope you & yours have a wonderful and safe day.

And if you come back here later in the week, you will see Cupcakes! And Christmas baking!

Muffin Tin Monday - Christmas Treats

Okay, so very briefly, as it's late and I'm knackered...

It's Muffin Tin Monday! Today I was doing Christmas baking, so when The Muffin got home from kindy, she had a Christmas Treats themed tin:


Top Row: Banana slices with candy cane cutouts; Pear with a gingerbread man pick; Mini pudding truffle (recipe here - and this time we tried out the new Cadbury Melts, and they are sooooo much better than Nestle!)

Middle: Little cup with various sprinkles.

Bottom Row: Ham and cheese "clothes"; Gingerbread man shaped bread and butter; Candy cane.

The idea of the little bread men was that she could use the cheese and ham clothes and the sprinkles to create her own little people. Here's what she came up with:

I particularly liked her little man with its hat. She said the white star was for its mouth ("because I ran out of round sprinkles") but I think it So looks like a little moustache! :o)

The After Shot:

The Muffin loooooved this tin! I have a cute theme planned for next week, too, and hopefully I'll be able to include some more challenging foods in that one! (do I dare incurring her wrath by including cucumber again??? You'll just have to come back next week to find out!)

To check out what other yummy mummies served up this week, go to The Muffin Tin Mom's blog.

Muffin Tin Monday - Christmas (#1)

It's Muffin Tin Monday (or it was yesterday, anyway)! In our house, Christmas preparations are picking up speed, and it's not even December yet! But The Muffin is Incredibly Excited about it, plus my shopping isn't as organised this year as it usually is, and we've got a Christmas party happening at our house this year, so there's a fair bit to organise...

Anyway, the point is, I decided to start our Christmas themed Muffin Tins this week, so we get to do a few of them before the big day. This one was a bit of a rush job, I shall do something more creative in the weeks to come!

Top Row: Apple Christmas tree; Apple Christmas bauble; Popcorn "snowflakes" with a puffy green pick.

Bottom Row: Pikelets (Reindeer footprints?); Yoghurt "snow" with vanilla, cinnamon & Christmas tree shaped sprinkles; Plum "Pudding".

I was very pleased with how the "Plum Pudding" turned out - it's just a whole small plum, with a bit of yoghurt drizzled on top, and holly made from a craisin and apple skin. The Muffin was thrilled with it. Upon discovering it was not the dessert, she wanted to know where the dessert was. I told her she had to find it by eating the other things. Eventually she discovered that the green pick was poked into a white marshmallow (hidden by all the popcorn). She found this simple little hide-and-seek aspect great fun.

The After Shot:


Enough said, I think! To check out what other mums did for Muffin Tin Monday this week, check out the Muffin Tin Mom's blog.

Coming soon: Cupcakes!

Royal Show Entries 2011

Wow, I can't believe I'm posting this so LATE. I'd been planning to post about these toward the end of Show week, while we were away on holidays. But I found myself trying to upload things using Husband's mobile phone's internet connection, which was So Slow that I gave up. And since we got home, I just seem to have been awfully busy!

Anyway, enough excuses - on to the sugary goodness...

I entered into three Classes at the Perth Royal Show this year: Decorated Biscuits (cookies), Patty Cakes (ie cupcakes), and Macarons.


The macarons were a nightmare. I made about twelve batches of the little buggers, wailing "Why did I write "macarons"? What On Earth Was I Thinking??" My macaron issues could easily fill a whole post, so I won't go into it here. Suffice to say, my macs tasted fine, and looked okay, but I was never in danger of winning any prizes! The ones I entered were the plain coloured one (at the front), and the back two pinks (the darker ones).

I was far happier with my cupcakes and my cookies. For the cookies, I decided to go with a Christmas theme:


All the decorating is royal icing, except the holly on the pudding, which I made from sugarpaste. I was really happy with how these turned out, and the judges must have agreed, because I Won! Woo hoo! The competition was a lot stiffer this year than it was last year, so I was really pleased.

Finally, for the cupcakes I decided on one of my favourite themes: Alice in Wonderland. After many preliminary sketches, and much elimination, I settled on these six designs:


You know how so often you have a clear idea of how you want something to look, and then when you make it, it doesn't turn out that way? Well this cupcake turned out Exactly as I'd imagined it - don't you Love It when that happens? I realise the Alice-Down-The-Rabbit-Hole cupcake design is not exactly an original one - it's been done by many, many people, including Planet Cake - but I've noticed that most of these designs use just a couple of flat white frills. I really wanted my Alice to have lots and lots of extra-poofy, voluminous petticoats.

Shhh - don't wake the Talking Flower - she might think you're a weed...


And don't tell the Queen that we've been Painting the Roses Red:


With all this cake, would you like a cup of tea? Or perhaps just half a cup...?


I also made a Bread-And-Butterfly with some little flowers, and a tabletop with a "Drink Me" bottle and tiny gold key.

Here's the whole set:

Most of the decorations are modelling paste, except the key, the red "paint", the "butter" and the little flowers' centres, which are all royal icing. The "Drink Me" topper (shown here sans cupcake) was sitting on top of a buttercream swirl for the Show to heighten the tabletop look.

Anyway, in case you're wondering - yep, these won their Class too! :o)

'Tis The Season!

I can't believe it's only one-and-a-bit days until Christmas! The good news is, I actually think I'm all organised. For once. The tree is up, the presents are all wrapped, cards have been sent and received, and all the Christmas baking has been done. I'm even half way through preparing my contribution to the family party on Christmas night (dessert - did you guess?).

Who knows? We might even get that quiet, relaxing Christmas Eve I've been aiming for (and missing entirely) these last few years!

In the meantime, I thought I'd share this recipe with you. Nowadays it seems to me that every man and his dog make something that looks similar to these little "mini puddings". But as far as I can tell, most of those recipes involve either a) using leftover actual Christmas pudding/cake; or b) just decorating a plain chocolate truffle to look like a pudding. Both of which would be delicious, I'm sure, but they're just not the same thing as the ones I grew up with. This recipe gives a nod to Christmas pudding by its use of currants and brandy (and the decoration, obviously). But The Hero here is the chocolate/brandy combination. They are very chocolatey and yummy. And there's still time to give them a try!

Mini Pudding Truffles

190g currants
1/4 cup brandy
250g chocolate cake crumbs (this can be any old chocolate cake, it doesn't have to be fancy)
1/2 tsp orange zest
1/3 cup icing sugar
125g dark chocolate, melted
100g white chocolate Melts (maybe "bark" in America?? Whatever white chocolate product you'd use to coat something with, anyway)
2 tsp oil
180g extra white Melts (these ones need to be round - see picture)
4 - 5 spearmint leaf lollies
2 - 3 red glace cherries

The first thing to do is soak the currants in the brandy for At Least one hour (overnight is even better if you have time).
When the soaking time is up, crumble your chocolate cake into fine crumbs, then add icing sugar, dark chocolate, and the currants WITH their soaking liquid.

Mix together, and then roll the mixture into small balls and refrigerate for half an hour. Note: this is not the easiest mixture to roll, due to the currants, which spend most of their time pursuing freedom from chocolate captivity (one must ask oneself WHY?). I find it's more a case of squeezing them into balls, rather than rolling per se.

While the balls are chilling, get yourself a small sharp knife, and start cutting up your cherries and mint leaf lollies (you can also use green glace cherries or angelica, but personally I think the mint leaves taste better and are easier to cut). Cut them as you will, keeping in mind that they are supposed to end up looking vaguely like holly. Here is ours this year:

Very geometrical. Maybe a little bit too much so - maybe a more organic vibe would have been better, as per previous years. But triangles were easy. And hey, they're still cute.

Next, melt the 100g white chocolate Melts, and use a drop of this to "glue" one of your chocolate balls onto an intact white chocolate Melt (ie the "extra" 180g are for the bases). Repeat. Once your little "puddings" all have bases to sit on, they are ready for decorating.

Drizzle a little of the melted white chocolate Melts onto the top of each truffle, and add a piece of cherry and two pieces of mint leaf - voila! Holly! With this step you will need to work only two or three truffles at a time - because they are cold, you only have a limited window of opportunity until the white Melts solidify, at which point obviously your "holly" won't stick anymore.

I realise this probably sounds all very complicated. It isn't. My three year old did a sterling job of sticking the "holly" on (see above).

And that's it - all you have to do now is a taste test! I encourage you to give these a whirl - they really do taste good, but honestly? For me the best thing about them is they're so darn cute. And when they're on a plate with lots of brown things (cookies, other chocolate things, etc), they really do inject some Christmas spirit!

And I should mention that I did not create this recipe! It was cut out of a magazine of some sort many years ago by my grandmother. So I'd love to credit its creator, but unfortunately I don't know who he/she was...

Merry Christmas everyone - I hope you and yours have a happy and safe holiday season!