Christmas Eats!

A belated merry christmas to everyone out there! I hope you all had lots of food and stuffed yourselves silly, because that's exactly what I did :)

Christmas isn't complete without a ham, and this year JC and I made one with a honey mustard glaze which turned out great! An extra sprinkling of brown sugar towards the end of the baking period gave us a nicely caramelised crust on the exterior.

Christmas also means gingerbread for me - the one time in the year that the ground ginger comes out from the pantry to play. This year I made some gingerbread men and Christmas trees as gifts, as well as a mini gingerbread house using the recipe from raspberri cupcakes. The chimney is pure genius - thanks Steph for the brilliant idea!

I decided to cook dinner for my family on Christmas Eve which started off with a Christmas bread wreath from A Table For Two. I was worried it wasn't going to turn out but it was surprisingly easy and I was so pleased that people knew it looked like a wreath! The bread was a nice texture as well with a crunchy outside and soft fluffy innards.

I made three courses and I was pretty nervous since I don't usually cook dinner food but thankfully nothing tragic happened and the food was well-received! The first course I made seared scallops with sweetcorn puree...

and the second course was braised pork belly with cauliflower puree, caramelised onions and apple syrup.

I put my old-but-new ice cream machine (thanks Phuoc!) to good use and made vanilla ice cream sandwiches for dessert with salted peanut caramel and chocolate sauce. I'm loving my ice cream machine at the moment, the weather is perfect for churning up ice creams and sorbets and eating it straight out of the tub! Yes, that's my guilty pleasure this summer :)

I hope everyone had a wonderful food-filled Christmas and best wishes for the new year! See you all on the other side! ♥ Jacq