Farewell 2010.

The last week of every year is always an insanely busy time in my life. This might have something to do with the fact that there is Christmas, followed by my sister's birthday (which always leads to lots of celebrating) and then of course more celebrating to ring in the new year.

Christmas was a super quiet affair this year, in fact if it didn't really feel like Christmas time at all. My sister and I have a tradition of watching 'Meet Me in St Louis' and baking Christmas cookies together every year - sadly this year I baked by myself, and we simply never got around to watching the movie. I did however hang out with some of my favourite people on the day AND I went to the movies. I don't know why I've never thought to go to the movies on Christmas before, it's fantastic! You get to see new releases without the accompanying first-week crowds. Think I know what my new Christmas tradition is going to be :P

The rest of the week has pretty much been spent helping my sister celebrate reaching the quarter century milestone in her life - and it has been lots of fun! I don't like to get too sentimental when blogging but I have to say I am so lucky to have such a great sister and am so proud of all her achievements this past year.

I must admit the highlight of my sister's birthday (aside from spending it with her, of course) was the cake. I absolutely love chocolate, so by default I absolutely love Lindt's cake collection. The birthday cake selected was the Chocolate Hazelnut Gateau. It is three layers of vanilla bean cake soaked in frangelico, layered with roasted nuts and gianduja (a hazelnut and chocolate paste). I highly recommend it...so delicious!

The day after my sister's actual birthday, the celebrating continued with a day of shopping, and this is where we finally tried this American-style diner that I've wandered past countless times over the past year but have never had the time to stop in and eat. The decor screams American diner with booths lined all along the walls, and the menu has typical diner fare with extensive burger and fries options, as well as all-day breakfast (featuring a dozen or so pancake options). We opted for pancakes, which were absolutely delicious and completely transported me back to my time in the States where I consumed insane amounts of pancakes (though the portion size was considerably smaller than American standards).

While I would definitely return, I have to say Melbourne has much better options when it comes to American-style diners. Guess I'll just have to get my year's worth of diner food fix when I return to the States.

***

Well, I can't believe 2010 is about to come to an end. While it hasn't always been great, I have had some of the most wonderful times of my life this year. Thank you to all the wonderful people in my life that have made it a pretty awesome year, I'm so lucky and grateful to know you all. I hope 2011 brings good health and happiness to all!

Happy New Year!!

Christmas Cookies.

It has a been a hectic time in my life since my last post, but when is it ever calm this time of year. Today, after a tense kind of morning I decided to come home and bake Christmas cookies to cheer myself up.

I decided to make two different types of cookies. The first were gingerbread people. I make these every year and almost always end up with several dozen of them - and that's after packing them up to be gifted. My version of gingerbread doesn't have allspice, nutmeg or cinnamon in it. It is super simple with ground ginger, golden syrup, flour, brown sugar and bicarbonate soda (and of course, butter). I much prefer this toned down, less spicy version of gingerbread.

This is them fresh out of the oven...

Then I gave them faces...

And here they are ready to be sent off as Christmas gifts.

The second type of cookie is a classic shortbread. The recipe of course comes from none other than the great Ina Garten (aka Barefoot Contessa), who generally inspires most my baking endeavors. These a Christmas-y in the sense that they are made into Christmas-related shapes, i.e. bells, angels, stars and Christmas trees. Aside from that they are pretty ordinary cookies. I varied some of them by drizzling them with some dark chocolate (as per Ms. Garten's suggestion).

A Disastrous Thanksgiving Meal.

I realise that the US Thanksgiving holiday was almost 2 weeks ago, and this post is long overdue. It would be easy for me to say I've been busy finishing up uni for the year, returning to work and just generally getting back in control of my life. But in truth, I think I'm embarassed about what a disaster my 3rd attempt of cooking a thanksgiving meal turned out to be and was simply dragging my feet about posting up the disastrous result.

So, to begin my quest to find a turkey was a complete disaster. I was in the middle of exams, and did not take into account that fresh turkeys will not be available until closer to Christmas. There were literally no turkeys available at my local grocer's. There was a sign telling me I could place an order for Christmas but that didn't help me in the slightest. This should have dissuaded me from pursuing this dream to make a traditional thanksgiving meal...but alas it didn't.

Instead I used the only whole chicken available to me, and it turned out to be the tiniest chicken I have ever cooked with. It was so incredibly small that I actually felt bad eating it... and considering turkeys are about 10 times the size of this chicken, it was really sad to even be calling it a turkey substitute.

At this point I was so upset about not having a turkey that I cheated and instead of making a potato side dish out of real potatoes I made mini-potatoes.

Because the chicken was so tiny, it was near impossible for it to produce sufficient amounts of fat/drippings to be turned into a gravy. So I supplied bottles of different ready-made sauces instead. I skipped making stuffing as well as cranberry sauce (though this is because it is so hard to source frozen cranberries!!).

The only thing that turned out was the pie. I took the recipe for Cranberry and Blueberry pie from the 2010 Thanksgiving issue of Bon Appetit and substituting raspberries for the filling (again, the reason being frozen cranberries are not easy to find).

The dough is a standard pie crust recipe (available here). To make the filling that I made (which varies slightly to the original Bon Appetit recipe - is as follows:

Ingredients

Approx. 3 1/2 cups of frozen (not thawed) Raspberries (or any other frozen berry combination you like)

1 1/4 cups of sugar (I actually put 3/4 cups of sugar because I didn't want it to be too sweet, so do whatever you like - it's a really flexible kind of recipe)

About 3 tablespoons of corn flour (though this may vary depending on how thick you want to make the filling)

About 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and some grated lemon zest

*The original Bon Appetit recipe includes adding cinnamon, but this doesn't go with ALL berries. I also left it out in my variation due to dietary requirements of my family members.

Method

Place everything into a pot and boil over medium heat (which the magazine said is approx. 15 mins - I found it did not in fact take that long).

Also remember to stir it constantly, as it's like making a jam and if it boils too quickly it will stick/burn to the sides of you pan, which is a complete pain to clean (trust me, I speak from past experience).

Once it's come to a boil, and thickened to a consistency you like, leave it to cool in a glass or ceramic bowl.

Then to assemble the pie - line a pie dish with crust (the standard size is a 12-inch dish, but you can use whatever you have it generally works), place cooled filling in centre and then you can either cover it completely with more crust or make a lattice top.

Brush dough with fresh cream, or milk, or butter - generally anything dairy to help it stick.

Bake for approx. 1 hour or until golden. Leave to cool a bit.

Bon appetit!