Category: Ramblings

Han’s Blogmas- Day Fourteen (Favourite Childhood Christmas Memory)

My favourite memory is from when I was a teen and is actually of Christmas Eve.

My brother took me to see Small Soldiers. It was at the height of my love for Spinal Tap and couldn’t wait to identify the characters they voiced.

Other than it being a good film, I remember little else. I know we got KFC on our way home, but I couldn’t tell you what presents I got the next day. Just remember being happy.

Han’s Blogmas – Day Eleven (Christmas food,whats on the menu)

So, I’m not really able to be creative with my Christmas dinner so, assuming I find Domnhall Gleeson under the tree this year (or a beautiful ginger substitute)… I’d like to have our three course Christmas dinner prepared for next year.

Starter
Chicken Liver Pate; made at home, with love, the night before.

ChickenLiverPateSweetSourShallots.jpg

Main
Roast beef, roast parsnips, carrot and swede ribbons, shredded sprouts with bacon, roast potatoes and the biggest vat of caramalised onion gravy.

Pudding
Christmas Tiramisu- Replacing the wine with amaretto and I’d throw in a bit of cinnamon and stewed apples too.

tiramisu

Han’s Blogmas- Day Ten (Show Us Your Cookies)

img_0429All three cookies use a gingerbread base of butter, sugar and golden syrup from this year’s Waitrose recipe:

Christmas Gingerbread Recipe

This recipe for gingerbread can be used to make a whole range of decorations, gifts and, of course, gingerbread people. Get the children to help roll and cut out the dough, and to decorate the biscuits.

  • Vegetarian

Ingredients

125g unsalted butter
100g dark muscovado sugar
4 tbsp golden syrup
325g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground ginger
Supercook Writing Icing (optional)

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 170°C, gas mark 3. Line baking trays with baking parchment. Melt the butter, sugar and syrup in a medium saucepan, stirring occasionally, then remove from the heat.
  2. Sieve the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ginger into a bowl and stir the melted ingredients into the dry ingredients to make a stiff dough.
  3. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and roll to a thickness of about 5mm. Dip biscuit cutters into flour before cutting the dough, or cut around templates, which you can find at waitrose.com/christmas. Place the shapes onto the lined baking trays and bake, in batches, for 9-10 minutes until light golden brown.
  4. Remove from the oven. While still warm, and using a skewer or chopstick, make any holes that you will need to hang up the biscuits with ribbon or to make a yuletide garland. If you are decorating your Christmas cake with gingerbread people, make the holes in their arms so that ribbon can be threaded through at a later stage.
  5. When completely cool, decorate with the icing. The gingerbread biscuits can be stored in an airtight container for up to two weeks.

Elf
Gingerbread

Santa
The ginger was substituted with Chocolate power, mild chilli powder and the zest & juice of two limes.

Reindeer
The ginger is substituted with chai latte powder and salted caramel syrup.