Merry Christmas!

Just a quick post to say a Merry Christmas to everyone out there reading this! Hope you've all enjoyed a fantastic Christmas meal with loved ones - I certainly did :) Today the family congregated upon our place to have Christmas dinner, and here are some snaps of the food on offer:

Smoked salmon, garlic aioli and chives on crackers

Orange glazed ham studded with cloves (made by Mum)

Gingerbread Galore!

The lovely bloggers Helen from Grab Your Fork and Suze from chocolatesuze recently organised a massive Xmas party for Sydney food bloggers. Everyone brought along a dish to share and needless to say with around 50 food bloggers in attendance, we ended up with huge amounts of food. Check out these posts for more foodie madness!

Amongst a tiered platter of classic kids favourites, "Elvis" cupcakes, a slow cooked Bo Ssam, chicken wings, a Makoto sushi platter and other delicious offerings, I made some iced gingerbread cookies for the occasion (recipe below).

A few days later I also decided to try out raspberri cupcakes' mini gingerbread houses. These turned out great and now there is a cute little gingerbread house sitting on my dining table awaiting it's destruction on Christmas Day! 

I didn't make all four houses in the recipe so I had some dough leftover for some gingerbread Christmas trees and gingerbread men to decorate the garden around my house. The house was very sturdy and the measurements for the house were perfect! Thanks Steph :)

It's not quite finished yet - on the day I intend on sprinkling some sifted icing sugar for some snow and also putting a puff of smoke from the chimney using mini marshmallows and an unravelled paperclip, as shown in the raspberri cupcakes recipe. More photos will be posted up of the finished product later.

La Renaissance Patisserie, The Rocks

Ever since tasting my last year's birthday cake from La Renaissance with melt-in-the-mouth delicate chocolate sheets and light-as-air mousse, I knew that I had to return for more cakes and pastries! Charm had to go to The Rocks Markets to pick up some things and with the promise of cake I tagged along.

Courtyard in La Renaissance Patisserie

We had lunch at La Renaissance first, choosing things from a range of pies, baguettes and quiches from their savouries menu and ordering at the counter before taking a seat in the quaint little courtyard out the back.

Poulet Chasseur pie - $8.00

I ordered the poulet chasseur pie which had a delicious chicken and vegetable. As soon as I cut into the pie the sauce oozed outand I could smell the tomato, garlic and white wine aromas from the sauce. The chicken was still succulent and the pastry was beautifully flaky.

Boeuf Hâche pie - $7.00

Malay-Chinese Takeaway, Sydney

One sweltering hot lunchtime I met up with Mum at Malay-Chinese Takeaway since I was craving some Malaysian food. I don't know who said that eating hot food on a hot day would make you cooler but it certainly didn't work for me! Although I thought I was semi-delusional for choosing to eat hot and spicy food on a hot summer's day the food was so good that it was worth it in the end.

When we got there during lunch hour it was packed with people but luckily we found a seat reasonably quickly. Malay-Chinese Takeaway has daily specials which are rotated around a 4-week time period. Today's special was mee rebus, which I was thinking of getting, but in the end decided to stick with an old favourite, the char kway teow.

Char Kway Teow - $9.00

Inspired by Chocolatesuze: Rainbow Vanilla Buttercake

Looks like a normal cake right?

Until you cut a slice out of it to reveal crazy rainbow colours!

I had planned on baking something amazing for my dear friend Queen Chu's 21st birthday, but it wasn't until I saw this cake that I thought a) I have to make this! and b) I'm crazy! At this point in time chocolatesuze had yet to post up her method of making her amazing rainbow cake so I was sort of improvising along the way and just praying that everything would turn out alright.

I was never as ambitious as chocolatesuze to make an astounding 20 layers in her cake AND make it into a fork shape, so I ended up with 8 layers. I didn't have high hopes for success while I was baking this, hence the lack of process photos but it turned out surprisingly well (albeit a bit lopsided!). Chocolatesuze's recipe is here for a 20 layer cake and probably one that is more efficient to make but I'll post mine below anyway just in case you're interested ;)