Flourless Chocolate Cake

I can't believe it's Christmas already! The year has flown by, especially the last few months which have been crazy busy for me. I've been lucky enough to have some time off work before Christmas so got stuck into the Christmas baking straight away, starting off with the usual gingerbread.

I've still got a couple of desserts and things to make over the next few days, but I thought that I'd revisit this flourless chocolate cake that I made last year for Christmas (but never got around to blogging about.... oops). Flourless chocolate cake was a cake I made from the first cookbook I was ever gifted, and probably kick-started my love of baking and cookbooks.

This flourless chocolate cake is adapted from a recipe from the queen of delicious, fattening things and midnight snacking from the fridge, Nigella Lawson. It's a rich, fudgey cake that I think sums up well what Christmas feasting means for me - indulgence and a little bit of gluttony. Don't be surprised if you find me piling my plate high with glazed ham, turkey and fresh prawns, and then collapsing onto the sofa for a well-earned post-feasting nap.

You could make this cake any time of year really, but a few strawberries and a dusting of icing sugar turns it into something a bit more festive. Even if you're greeted with a few groans from people who have over-eaten when this cake is brought out, don't pay attention to them and make sure that everyone has a slice. They won't regret it.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas with their family, friends and loved ones over a delicious meal!

Christmas Shortbread

Only 4 more sleeps til Christmas! The lead up to Christmas can be stressful and crazy - especially when shopping centres are packed and it takes half an hour to even get into the carpark - but I think it makes me appreciate Christmas even more, since it's usually quite a relaxing time for me.

The thing I love most about Christmas is the gathering of family and friends to share a meal and exchange gifts. This year, I'm hosting a Christmas Eve dinner at my place, which is sure to involve lots of mayhem in the kitchen! I've tried to be organised though by making some things in advance, like this Christmas shortbread.

This recipe is super easy to make, and are perfect as little treats to go with a tea or coffee after a meal, or wrapped up as take-home gifts for guests. I took a regular shortbread recipe and injected some festive cheer into it by turning half of the dough into cranberry and white chocolate shortbread, and the other half into green tea shortbread.

I love the contrasting colours of the two shortbreads together. They also have quite different flavours with the cranberry and white chocolate being sweeter with pops of tartness from the cranberry, and the green tea shortbread being ever so slightly bitter. Regardless, they are both delicious, and I think they will become part of my regular Christmas baking routine from now on!

I hope everyone has a fabulous Christmas! May you stuff your bellies full of tasty food and may Santa make all your Christmas wishes come true :)

Gingerbread Christmas Tree

You know that Christmas is here when there is the unmistakeable aroma of gingerbread wafting through the kitchen. It's become somewhat of a tradition of mine to make gingerbread for the holiday season, and since I've done gingerbread men and gingerbread houses before, I thought it was time for something new.

I received a Gingerbread Tree kit as a gift and decided to put it to use. It came with a base and two different sized wooden dowels for the interior stem of the tree, as well as a set of five graduated star cookie cutters and a circle cutter. Everything I needed to make my very own Gingerbread Christmas Tree.

Making the gingerbread was easy enough. I just used my usual recipe and cut out about 5 stars of each size using the five graduated star cutters. If you are going to thread it through a wooden dowel, don't forget to also cut out a hole in the centre of the stars. I cut an extra small star for the top of the tree as a topper as well.

I decorated each star with royal icing before assembling the tree, which just involved placing the stars in order of size on top of each other, so that the base of the tree has the biggest stars going to the top of the tree with the smallest. If you don't have a stand, you can also use the icing to glue the stars on top of each other, which will create the same effect. And that's all it takes to make a Christmas tree of the edible variety! Half the fun is actually taking it apart and eating it :)

Christmas Macarons

I had planned on doing lots of Christmas baking this year, but somehow the time just flew by and before I knew it, Christmas was only a week away and I still had to do all my Christmas shopping and baking!

Luckily, I recently received some McLean's Run Open Range eggs from the lovely people at One Green Bean which inspired me to get cracking with my Christmas baking. I wanted to use make something that would put these fresh, quality eggs to good use and eggnog was the first thing that sprung to mind. I'm not a big fan of drinks that use egg though (alcoholic or otherwise) so instead I decided to capture the flavour of eggnog in something else that uses eggs as the main ingredient - macarons.

In the end, I made both eggnog flavoured and candy cane macarons. It's been a while since I've made macarons and it took me a few attempts to get it right, so it was a good thing I had a dozen eggs to work with! It also didn't help that I was working with a new oven as well which doesn't seem to want to be my friend yet.

I love the brightly coloured candy cane macarons which are filled with peppermint buttercream and rolled in crushed candy canes. But I think the eggnog macarons are a little more exciting flavour-wise with the warm, spicy cinnamon and nutmeg and a hit of alcohol thanks to some rum that I added into the buttercream. They go down well with a glass of chilled eggnog as well.

And now it's only 2 more days til Christmas! I hope each and every one of you out there has a fantastic Christmas filled with lots of awesome presents and delicious food!

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 Tree Meringues and the Sydney Food Bloggers Christmas Picnic

Photo credit: Simon from the heart of food

Oh yes, it's that time of year again - when shopping centres play carols that get stuck in your head for the rest of the day, and reindeer horns and red noses start appearing on cars around Sydney. It's Christmas, which means it's also time for the 2nd annual Sydney Food Bloggers Christmas Picnic!

As usual there were copious amounts of food present which were arranged on the makeshift dining table. As much as I wish I had the stomach space to try everything, I never quite get around to it all but everyone's contributions looked delicious!

Clockwise from top left: Ribs by Billy from A Table for Two; Macaron tower by Cleony from I Eat Sweet; Chocolate Christmas tree by Lisa from Lisa Perkovic; Orange, pistachio and cardamom cupcakes by Angie from Angie Lives to Eat (and Cook)!

There were more sweets than savouries as expected and even though I keep telling myself to make a savoury item for the next food blogger meet-up, I ended up making a sweet item... oops! Luckily there were savoury contributions from other people but you had to be quick otherwise you missed out (case in point: Billy's ribs - gone in 60 seconds!)

Clockwise from top left: Mini pecan pies by Rhonda from The Dainty Baker; Mini Christmas puddings by Vivian from vxdollface; Cheese bread by Tammi from Insatiable Munchies; Strawberry Santas by Ayana from Absolutely Ayana

I ended up making meringues to bring to the picnic. Midway through beating the egg whites I realised that I could Christmas-ify them up by colouring them green and putting little stars on top. And voila - Christmas Tree Meringues!

These were really easy to make, and also relatively quick although they do need to be in the oven for a while. Even though it's only egg whites and sugar beaten together, they do become strangely addictive and I may or may not have munched on a few on the way to the picnic...

A big thank you to Helen from Grab Your Fork and Suze from chocolatesuze for organising the picnic, I had an awesome day! Looking forward to the next one already :)

Christmas in July

'Twas the night before Christmas (in July), when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse...

Except for a crazy onslaught of food bloggers and friends who were kindly invited by Billy and The Pom to join them in celebrating Christmas in July! Thanks for letting us invade your kitchen and your house for the night :) 

Of course Christmas just isn't Christmas without being able to gorge yourself on all kinds of food. And indeed we had a great big feast in store that went on well into the night.

We kicked off the night with some snacks and a cheese platter brought by Shez including her yummy home-made labne.

Then the table was set, the Christmas music started playing, a picture of a crackling fireplace appeared on the tv screen and dinner was served! We all marvelled at Billy's beautiful bread wreath which he served with some delicious truffle butter.

Gleaming Maple Cheesecake & Glazed Ham

Christmas has well and truly passed now but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy a nice glazed ham or a festive cheesecake anytime you want. I spent my Christmas at home surrounded by my loving family and lots of delicious food. Two items on our Christmas menu included a glazed ham from Donna Hay and a gleaming maple cheesecake from Nigella Lawson. To see what other food was on offer that day, check out this post!

My cheesecake was well received, although being my fiercest critic I knew it was overbaked and not as light and creamy as it should be. I'm not sure whether to blame my oven or not but I checked it after half the supposed baking time and it already looked done. I took it out about 10 minutes after that and I knew that it had been in the oven for too long since it was missing the wobbly centre.

Despite my mistakes in making this cheesecake, I would definitely make it again. The maple syrup smells fantastic and permeates through the whole cake. And of course, the gleaming layer of maple syrup on top of the cheesecake is a definite crowd-pleaser.

I've also included in this post (just for you, Trissa!) the orange glazed ham that my Mum made. The glaze was delicious except there simply wasn't enough of it, both when it was being glazed and in taste. The recipe below is straight out of the book but I would suggest perhaps making double quantities of the glaze since most of the glaze was already used up the first time the ham came out of the oven. Glazing it a few more times would also help impart more of the flavour onto the ham.

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.