Fairy lights and fruitcake

Post-audition, life has seen an onslaught of all things Christmas: tinsel, advent calendars, the annual debate of whether or not it will irritate people to send them a family Christmas letter, and an endless string of Christmas parties - sadly more involving Santa than champagne. The kids are already at fever pitch over the prospect of a visit from Monsieur Claus; the morning after the Christmas tree (a rather sad looking specimen chosen by Dan and Gramps from the farm) was installed - at 5.45am to be precise - Neil found the kids standing in front of the "tree", fairy lights twinkling, totally enraptured, looking for presents.

And, of course, festive baking. For a learner baker like me, Christmas lends a good excuse to try out things I'm unlikely to cook otherwise. Starting with a brandy-soaked Christmas cake...

It isn't very rewarding, however, making fruit cakes for people who don't like fruit cakes. For instance, it was hard to draw much pride from Neil's "If I liked fruit cake, I'm sure I'd like this", said with his face distorted into obvious displeasure at being forced to sample it. Similarly, Dan's "I like it Mummy, but just the icing, but just the white icing - not that yucky yellow icing". So really, I should have just served up some white fondant icing and basked in the compliments.

And then I had all this dried fruit to find a use for - so I had a bash at mincemeat. I made some festive brioche, filling with the mincemeat and Whittaker's Dark Ghana chocolate, to which I've become addicted. These were duly delivered to the Mainly Music Christmas party, which in hindsight was not a wise move considering the amount of brandy-sodden fruit the brioche contained, and was eaten by hordes of preschoolers. Their parents have me to thank if their children were unusually mellow for the rest of the day.

Then I made mince pies. Athough I cooked them within an inch of their lives, they were delicious. The pastry was beautifully short and perfectly cooked on the bottom, if borderline over-cooked on the edges.

I've also had a few attempts at pavlova making. Our local Nosh store held their annual pavlova competition today, so I duly entered a very homemade looking piece. When presenting it to the store, the lady who was organising it said "I bet it tastes great"... which is the food equivalent of saying "You've got a great personality". So I plonked it down among these meringue, cream and strawberry works of art and haven't heard since. Suffice to say, I don't think I won! Still, I bet it really did taste great...

What else? I had another bash at croissants. Definite improvement. And easier, although I had rolling pin arm ache for a day afterwards. My physio husband's professional opinion was that I needed to, and I quote, "take a concrete pill and harden up".

So, some interesting baking escapades these past few weeks..and more to come!

TTFN x