The end of the Christmas baking

Last post I introduced you to phase one of the Christmas baking. That was just the trial run. On Christmas Eve we spent all day cooking. We made, more or less, the same things as shown in the previous post and luckily it went rather well.

Benny rolling out the peppermint creme dough

We ended up using roughly more than 2 kilos of icing sugar

To make approximately 400 peppermint cremes you need six egg whites and a lot of icing sugar. We used about 2.5 kilos.

Pop the egg whites in a bowl then slowly add sifted icing sugar. Once it starts to come together add a little peppermint essence. About two cap fulls from a small bottle should suffice but feel free to taste it and add more if you want to. Keep mixing and adding until it begins to form a stiff dough. If it's sticky add more sugar.

Once it's in dough form you should be able to roll it out. We split it in two and added green food colouring to one half. This just made our Christmas bags of cremes look a little more interesting once we were done. 

Cover a flat surface with icing sugar so the dough doesn't stick and roll until it's around 5mm - 1cm thick. Then cut it out into pretty shapes. Pop the finished shapes onto grease-proof paper and leave to dry for around 24 hours.

We cut out some stars, holly leaves, circles and hearts.

I have to say, we didn't allow ours to stand for that long as we were in a rush to get them bagged up. In our warm kitchen they seemed hard enough within eight or so hours.

The green peppermint dough

We originally found a recipe for peppermint cremes that said to add double cream. Ben was adamant that his mum, who makes fantastic everything, didn't use cream. He was right so we omitted that ingredient and went with the above recipe which comes entirely from her!

Cheese biscuits

For this bout of cheese biscuit creation we doubled our original recipe to 200g cheddar cheese, 200g flour and 200g butter. That made around 70, a mixture between the big paprika'd ones and the little ones.

Honeycomb 

We normally really struggle with honeycomb but on attempt eight it went right. The perfect amount of crunch, sweetness and stickiness. 

The honeycomb went perfectly!

Our bagged up snowballs

The finished product filled with cheese biscuits, peppermint cremes, snowball cookies and honeycomb!

Christmas Baking

With a new oven we thought baking would be a doddle. No more uneven heat, eternal cooking times, burning or underdone food.

Well, the cooking part of the baking went well but we struggled with temperatures, dough and butter.

Sugar and Golden Syrup melting over a low heat

Here we attempt Honeycomb Toffee (like what you get in a Crunchie) from a Nigella recipe. We've attempted this six times and all times, including last night, we have failed. Last night's failures were first because the mixture got too hot and burned before we put in the bicarb then the second batch we panicked and took it off the heat too early. At least the second is edible. It is crunchy to begin with but soon turns to sticky, chewy toffee in your mouth.

It's lovely but not exactly what we were going for.

Benny, our new kitchen and, in the background, our wonky blackboard

We then made simple cheese biscuits, which I forgot to photograph. Just mix 100g mature cheddar cheese, 100g flour and 100g butter together until it forms a stiff dough. If it goes all crumbly like mine did last night just add a little more softened butter until you can roll it out.

Cut out shapes and lay on a greased baking tray, sprinkle with a little paprika for decoration and bake at 180 degrees for 15-20 mins.

Snowball cookies in the process of being rolled in icing sugar

We also made Snowball Cookies. These looked really simple to make just 100g of softened butter mixed with 75g of icing sugar to make buttercream (I was tempted to stop here and just eat the butter cream) then combine that with 150g of flour, 25g chopped almonds, 25g chopped walnuts and the zest of a lemon.

That should then apparently form a dough. No such luck. It was just crumbly and would not stick together. I ended up putting in at least another 100g of butter. It then has to sit in the fridge for 30 mins. Afterwards roll into little balls and put on a greased baking tray. Bake for 10-12 mins in a preheated over at 180 degrees.

We popped our fan oven to 160 degrees and kept checking them. The total cooking time was probably about 15 mins. 12 wouldn't have been enough but 15 might have been a little too long.

Then roll all the balls in icing sugar until they look like snowballs! They are quite delicious.

Messy work

I don't think I am a natural baker. I don't like getting messy and dough under my finger nails was a pain but I enjoyed this bout of cooking. Even if it was peppered with difficulty and failure. Also, I love our new kitchen, it's fantastic to work in!

Guest Post: Time to move on

Friend and fellow moving-house-a-week-before-Christmas-nutcase Ali Bunn shares her experiences of the house buying process. 
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I moved into my horrid little council flat in March 2010. My husband (who was my boyfriend at the time) had been living there with his daughter for just over two years. It's your typical council flat - two damp bedrooms, a damp bathroom (with no bath!), a long damp lounge/diner, a small damp kitchen and no garden. The wardrobe in the master bedroom has been converted into a production studio and there's barely room to swing a rat. The first thing I did when I moved in was paint the lime-green lounge deep chocolate and coffee, but that's where the alterations ended. I couldn't envisage myself living there for long, it has never felt like my place and I hate it. Still, I've been there 21 months. 21 long, horrible months.

I'm lucky enough (if you can call it that?) to have inherited a share of a house in Windsor, which I subsequently sold to one of the other shareholders. This put my husband and I in an unusual position. We had (just) enough money to buy ourselves a house outright, no mortgage, no huge debt. We started looking in September and it was the second house we saw that we fell for. Big kitchen, three bedrooms (one for all the husband's studio stuff) and even a shed in the garden. The kid's favourite part of the house was the glittery toilet seat, I like that it has a bath.

You'd have thought being cash buyers would make things quick and simple. There's no chain either side, we have the cash in the bank, they have somewhere to move to, the survey was fine, the searches were fine, everything seems so easy and simple. No such luck. Our offer was accepted at the end of September, we get the keys on 15th December. A staggering 12 weeks. 

So why the delay? Our solicitors kept saying "We''re waiting for things from the vendor's solicitor". I'm sure the vendor is being told the same thing. It's not to make more money, they get a flat fee for dealing with conveyancing. Maybe they just want their boss to think they're busy?

Still, the end is in sight. We've paid our deposit and on Wednesday the HUGE balance of £112,500 will be transferred and we will be the proud owners of Number 12. We've got our insurance ready to kick in the moment we get the keys (can you imagine not getting it sorted? Sods law says the second you get the keys, the house burns down and all that money would be lost), Sky is booked to install a dish, utilities transferred, council informed, Christmas cards with change of address included have been sent. Totally, utterly, completely prepared.

Oh no, should I start packing?!

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You can read more from Ali over at http://bunnthebaker.blogspot.com

The average age of a first time buyer is 38-44

I came across a granny blog that was talking about how older couples were being pushed out of their homes to make way for young families. Read the post if you are interested because the part that caught my eye was the average age of a first time buyer.

I'm 23 and my boyfriend is 26. We've just bought our first home.

I can't think what would push the average up to 38-44. Is it that young people are so in debt that they can't afford to save, does no one see the merits of buying a house until that late in life, do people have better things to save for?

Things get complicated

We popped over to The House to measure up for an oven at the weekend. They currently have an electric oven in there whilst we really want dual fuel. They have no idea if there's a gas supply in there.

I don't really want to leave it to the last minute to work out whether or not we can get a dual fuel cooker because it might be too late by then. We'd also have to get someone in to fit the thing. And I doubt I'll be able to find someone to come out on a Saturday who won't cost an arm and a leg.

We have a microwave so it won't be like we can't eat. We can survive on ready meals, takeaway and, after Christmas, leftovers. However, part of our thrifty plan for presents this year was to make sweets and food for people. Can't do any of that without an oven!