January blues resolved

The last of the Christmas Cake...

I gave up giving up years ago. To my mind, facing the remainder of the cold, dark winter with nary a piece of chocolate or cake to brighten up a dull day is a depressing thought indeed. Life can be hard enough sometimes, so no need to make things even more difficult I say. A spot of self-flagellation or a hair-shirt anyone? Nope, me neither, thank you very much. Generally speaking then, I usually resolve to add rather than subtract - to do something nice for myself instead of enduring months of self-inflicted deprivation. Because when I'm feeling happy, I tend to take better care of myself. That's not to say I don't recognise the need for a return to a more sensible approach to life after the excesses of Christmas. Continuing down the road of over-indulgence would soon turn me into a grumpy, over-fed couch-potato (or a porkling, as they would have called me in medieval England - guess who got a new word book for Christmas?). 

Christmas Tart Amandine

I take a two-pronged approach post-Christmas: If variety is the spice of life - the sparkly, outgoing soul of the party - then moderation is the more sensible sister, keeping everything and everyone on an even keel. One of the reasons I love the first mince-pie of the festive season and hanker after a sausage roll or two to go with a glass of hot port, is that I don't have mince-pies or sausage rolls at any other time of the year. Ditto Christmas cake, turkey, cranberry sauce, gingerbread stuffing... the list goes on. All of this is deliciously moreish at the start of the season, but there is no doubt that come January first, I'm always ready for something new. 

Before moving on to the 'something new', a quick word to say that if you have any mincemeat left over in your fridge, Mary Berry has a wonderful recipe for a Christmas Tart Amandine - essentially a twist on the Bakewell tart, using mincemeat instead of jam. It is incredibly good. Mam baked this twice in the run up to Christmas and it was demolished each time. The recipe is printed below if you need a little January Blues Treat and would like to try it. But I digress - back to the 'something new' (or in this case, something different). 

And so to inject some variety into the traditional festive feasting, I started the year with an Italian feast for four on New Year's Day, with freshly baked bread-sticks, olives and other yummy nibbles, all washed down by the last of the Christmas cocktail devised by Sister No.1 (a rather tasty but dangerous combination of home-made cranberry gin mixed with prosecco). In spite of the slight cocktail-induced wobble in my step, I managed to keep my hostess hat on straight and succeeded in cooking a lovely risotto with roasted butternut squash and crispy bacon, served up with a fresh green salad. Thankfully, I had dessert prepped and ready to go from the day before - I say thankfully, as we had wine with the risotto, which left me incapable of doing anything more than dishing up scoops of the vanilla gelato (sticking with the Italian theme here) and letting everyone help themselves to the warm chocolate fudge sauce and toasted coconut shards, hazelnuts and chocolate brownie pieces (DIY ice-cream sundaes all round). Suitably stuffed, we drank espresso and amused ourselves with tiny saucer crackers that Sister No.2 had given me for Christmas (quite the cutest thing I've ever seen). It was a brilliant start to the new year - fabulous food, fabulous company, laughter and bubbles. What more could a girl ask for?

Having kicked off 2014 with a feast of equal proportion to the Christmas fare but vastly different in taste, I think now is the time for some of that sensible moderation. I've ordered a couple of new baking books and eagerly await their arrival. My plan for the next few weeks is to get back to the yoga mat for some much needed stretching, plenty of beach-walking and fresh air, time spent contemplating the baking year ahead and perhaps a chocolate or two (that tin of Roses is like the magic porridge pot - I swear they're multiplying every time I put the lid back on). I'm going to dive into my cake books as soon as they arrive and find something new and delicious to bake. With a little bit of delayed gratification, I think I'm going to really enjoy my next piece of cake. 

The Great Christmas Bake-Off

Boy am I glad to be within touching distance of Christmas Eve. One cake left to bake and deliver and then it'll be time for Christmas Cocktails, sausage rolls and mince-pies with the family. Unbeknownst to the producers at the BBC, the Great Christmas Bake-Off has been taking place in my kitchen for the last few weeks. As the days progressed, the challenges grew, well, more challenging. I was contestant and judge all rolled into one. Depending on the day (or the hour frankly) I was either the calm, steady contestant, unflappable in the face of disaster, or the one who gets that slightly crazed look before rapidly descending into a frenzied panic as the tasks mount up. When in judging-mode, I was more Paul Hollywood than Mary Berry - a tough task-master and harsh critic. 

First came the legion of angels (yep, that's them lined up for their photo-op above) - iced gingerbread angel biscuits, with hand-painted golden halos. Angels made a return appearance the following weekend (more a host than a legion this time), along with a copse of Christmas Trees and a small flurry of Snowflakes. These featured the Christmas-Spiced Chocolate biscuits (i.e. chocolate gingerbread) that I had tried-out last month and proved very popular. 

In between, I've been busy rustling up batches of puddini, chocolate and peanut-butter cups, fudge and Christmas Tree Decoration biscuits. As someone who loves language (I am a word nerd and have been known to read the dictionary for fun), I started thinking about collective nouns. Looking at a table full of puddini truffles and cooling racks lined with biscuits, I wanted a word other than 'batch' to describe them (my mind is indeed a strange and wondrous place). Most of the collective nouns in the English language relate to animals or birds and some are fairly well-known (a herd of cattle for instance or a flock of seagulls) but some are brilliantly obscure and descriptive, often conjuring up amusing images - a congregation of alligators (all neatly dressed for mass), a gang of elk and a mob of emus (villains of the animal kingdom?), a bloat of hippopotamuses and a waddling of ducks (how apt). There are even some for us humans - a blush of boys, a draught of butlers, a hastiness of cooks and a superfluity of nuns - while right at the top of the heap is the pantheon of gods.

A twinkle of Tiny Christmas Cakes

So what then to call my myriad little Christmas confections? Perhaps a jolly of puddini truffles, a jingle of Christmas Tree decoration biscuits and a chime of chocolate and peanut-butter cups? I could bake a scent of gingerbread men and decorate a twinkle of Tiny Christmas Cakes. Much better than boring old 'batch' every time. The next time the phone rings, I can answer and say 'Sorry, can't talk, I'm in the middle of stirring up a bauble of fudge'. Festive collective nouns? Language is constantly evolving, so why not? 

On the subject of language, and more specifically words, I was playing with a new toy the other day - tiny little letter stamps that can be arranged on a rack to make whatever word you choose, which you then impress onto a biscuit before it's baked. In my defence, I was quite tired and brain-addled at the time, so working out which way the letters had to go was probably more of a challenge than it should have been (they're all back-to-front so that when impressed, they come out the right way). As a result, my planned Christmas star biscuit with 'star' written on it, became 'rats' ('Oh rats!' she cried when she realised what she had done). Not quite the traditional nativity scene eh? 'So the three wise men followed the Christmas rats to Bethlehem, where they found the Baby Jesus in the manger'. And on that note, I wish you a very merry, twinkly Christmas, rats and all.

Mrs Santa Claus

Groom & Bride iced biscuits

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, which I can only hope, since I have indeed been absent for a few weeks now. My world of crazy got even crazier, with baking and archaeology colliding, leaving me in a sad little heap on the floor (No.2 Sister talked me safely down off the ledge). I had an early order of puddini and gingerbread men to get ready last weekend, a large order of iced-biscuit wedding favours to make during the week and spreadsheets of archaeological sites and monuments to sort. I was firing on all cylinders until finally, my brain hurting from the academic work and my hands cramping from all the piped-icing detail, I reached this weekend. Oh the relief!

Not that all work here ceased. I wanted to get ahead with some of the Christmas order prep, but thankfully No.1 Sister appeared like an angel at my door to lend a much-needed hand. We made sugar-paste stars and crowns (now dry and ready to be sprayed with edible gold paint) and cut out lots of little Christmas tags. What with the extremely busy couple of weeks and the early batch of puddini-making bringing me firmly into festive mode, I am considering a name change to Mrs Santa Claus (without the physical festive upgrade to plump, grey-haired and red-cheeked please). I even had the able-assistance of a little elf in my workshop yesterday (a.k.a. my sister). But even Mrs Clause needs a break every now and again and while my plan for today is to relax, read the Sunday papers and recharge my batteries for the week ahead, already I can feel the cogs in my mind starting to turn, listing all of the things I really should be doing instead...the Christmas cakes need feeding ... biscuit dough to make ... Gingerbread men to get ready... next batch of puddini to prepare...

Just in the nick of time of I spoke to No.3 Sister, who has ordered me to expel all such thoughts from my mind and camp out on the sofa for the rest of the day. So the Tiny Christmas cakes can wait (that's them in the photo, fresh from the oven last month - it feels slightly wrong to be displaying them naked, without even their marzipan underwear on, but I promise, the next time you see them, they will be fully dressed) and so too can all of the other chores I could or should be doing. Given that it's the first of December and XmasFM is broadcasting live once more, I think it's time to stop and smell the roses (or the cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg). In the spirit of all things festive, I thought I'd also post a picture I took of the last piece of that chocolate gingerbread biscuit batch (now more aptly named the Christmas-Spiced Chocolate Biscuit). It's a Christmas tree shape and I was playing around with some icing to plan out a design for this year's Christmas biscuits. I hope it infects you with some of my Christmas spirit. Yes folks, it is indeed beginning to look alot like Christmas!