felinedream

It’s Christmas Eve! I sound excited, but if I’m honest I’m not feeling it yet. The kids are wired to the moon and I’m excited to experience tomorrow with them but other than that I’m not really a Christmas person. In an effort to have a stress free day I am not cooking tomorrow. Devin has decided that we will be eating steak so I bought that in, with all the usual trimmings. I couldn’t be bothered to buy a pudding so I may knock up some sort of cake in the afternoon. I am, however, going to make American style pancakes with bacon and maple syrup for breakfast.

We’re having a bit of a white Christmas. Today my mum and I went into Glasgow with the kids to do some last minute shopping and I was shocked to find that there was no snow on the ground. The picture above was taken as we waited for the train to take us into Glasgow (it was taken at 10am and I live 15 minutes from Glasgow city centre). The cold doesn’t bother me at all and I’m really looking forward to a day where it’s cold outside and I don’t have to leave the house. In fact tomorrow I shall be staying in my jammies all day.

On a Christmasy note: A few weeks ago the Fab Five had their Christmas dinner and exchanged Secret Santa gifts. The brief this year was that the gift had to be homemade. Stupidly I forgot to take pictures but the lovely Emma has blogged about the gifts she made me. I was seriously blown away by her thoughtfulness and generosity. The sugar scrub is amazing and I highly recommend it. The flavoured vodka has been saved and we will break it open tomorrow night. In return I made Sara a wooden trinket box. I feel like I cheated because I had a lot of ’support’ from the tech teacher at school. However, it was awesome and I shall prod Sara for photos soon.

So, Merry Christmas everyone. I hope you enjoy your day and that Santa is good to you and yours.

It’s less than a week to Christmas now and I may have found some festive spirit lurking inside of me. We put the tree up last weekend and Devin decorated it. It looks much better in real life, honest guv. I think he did a cracking job and he really enjoyed himself. This weekend I am living in the house of sick. The wee one has some sort of tummy bug and as a result is being clingy and smelly. For some reason it all fits in with my Christmas spirit. Someone always gets ill at this time of year.

I’ve been finding that, due to the cold and the SNOW (yes we have some), I’m craving warming winter foods. With Brodie being unwell and me still at work, I don’t have the time to shop or make hearty stews or casseroles. I’ve resorted to taking a dish from my childhood and tweaking it a little. This is perfect winter food for me.

Cheese, egg and toast.

The basic recipe calls for bread to be toasted on one side while you mix together a large amount of grated cheese (I used applewood smoked because it’s my favourite) and an egg. This mixture is then spread over the untoasted side of the bread and grilled until it is fluffy and golden. It is yummy like this (especially dipped in brown sauce) but I made a few changes. I like my toast very light and soft so I didn’t toast the underside of the bread. Then when I mixed together the egg and cheese I added some mustard. Before spreading the mixture I layered the bread with ham and then piled the mixture on top of that. Seriously easy and wonderfully moreish. In fact, I might go and make this very dish for my breakfast.

A while ago I signed up for Eileen’s Christmas Bauble Swap. The task was to make a bauble for your partner’s Christmas tree using things you already had in your craft supplies. I was partnered with Annie. I set about sewing something using felt and beads. Here’s what I came up with (excuse my rubbish camera phone picture):

I was pretty impressed with it, especially since I haven’t sewn anything in ages. I also sent Annie some sparkly felt and some buttons from my stash. In return I got this amazing package:

I love the knitted Santa, which now adorns my Christmas tree. Thank you very much to Annie for her lovely bauble and thank you to Eileen for organising the swap.

I have never made a fruit cake before. There, I said it! However, hubby likes fruit cake and what with it coming up to Christmas I thought it would be nice to have a go. I chose Nigella’s recipe for Marzipan Fruit Cake because hubby loves marzipan and because I hoped that the extra marzipan would stop the cake from being too dry (my main problem with fruit cake). Nigella’s recipe calls for dried pears but I couldn’t find any so used dried peaches instead. I thought the cake looked amazing. I made it out Tuesday and we tucked into it last night (Friday). Hubby insisted that I cover it in more marzipan and icing. It wasn’t a complete disaster but I think it’s a skill that I need to work on.

All in all it turned out better than expected. The cake itself was surprisingly light and moreish. The only thing with this cake is that you have to prepare some of the ingredients the night before baking and then, once it’s baked, you should leave it for a week (not that we managed that one). Definitely not a quick process.

Nigella’s Marzipan Fruit Cake

150g sultanas
100g natural coloured glace cherries, halved
150g dried pears, chopped
100ml white rum
250g marzipan
50g ground almonds
zest of 1 lemon
175g plain flour
100g caster sugar
100g butter
2 large eggs
1 tsp orange flower water

Use a 20cm spring form cake tin, buttered and lined bottom and sides, so that the parchment comes a good 10cm above the rim.

The night before mix sultanas, glace cherries and dried pears in a large bowl and cover with the rum.  Dice the marzipan and put it in the freezer. Leave both to soak and freeze overnight.

The next day, preheat oven to 140/gas 1. Beat together ground almonds, lemon zest, sugar, flour, butter and eggs.  Add drained fruit, orange flower water and frozen marzipan, mix together.  Put the mixture into the tin, levelling the surface, and making a slight indent in the middle to get an even surface when cooked.

Cake should be baked for 2 - 2 1/2 hours, or until skewer comes out clean (I found this difficult to judge because there were bits of gooey marzipan and peach on the skewer). Do not overcook, as it will continue to cook in its own heat for a bit.  But don’t worry - there’s enough dried fruit and marzipan to stop anyone complaining that the cake is dry.

Allow to cool in the tin then rewrap in parchment and foil to store for about a week. I fed the cake a couple of spoonfuls of rum before I wrapped it.

That’s a lie, Christmas has hardly entered my head these last few weeks.

There is just over a week until the end of the school term and I am working hard to get everything done so that I can enjoy my holiday (and when I say enjoy I mean write my essays for uni). I got my recently completed uni essay back today and got an A, so all my hard work paid off.

There will be crafty posts to come though, I promise. This week I have made a fruit cake, which is steeping in rum as we speak; completed my Secret Santa gift for the fab five get-together on Saturday; and there is a parcel awaiting me at the Post Office which I suspect contains my eagerly anticipated Bauble Swap stuff from Annie. In short, there will be plenty of crafty stuff to come.

So this weekend will be all about Christmas: with the aforementioned get-together on Saturday and on Sunday we will be putting up the Christmas tree.

So, after a period of absence (and obvious depression due to lack of computer) I’m back with a shiny new laptop. I have been keeping up to date and reading your blogs using my ipod touch over the past few weeks but I hadn’t managed to update my own blog.

The past month has been pretty manic in terms of work and uni. I seem to have a lot going on and as well as working Monday to Friday, I’ve been at uni classes on a Saturday. I’m glad to see the back of that routine. This has meant that craftwise I have achieved very little. I baked for Dev’s school fair (chocolate cupcakes and caramel shortcake) and managed to make some masks for the kids Halloween.I’ve just posted off my parcel for the lovely Eileen’s Christmas Bauble Swap. I shall post details once the swap has been completed. I’ve also signed up for an Alice in Wonderland themed swap in the New Year over at Meridian Ariel’s blog. I’m looking forward to this one and hoping that I can come up with something amazing for my partner, whoever that may be.

Right now I have reports to write and a daughter to get to bed so I shall leave you with this photo of said little girl, trying out her new look (Skater style).