Christmas Baking

 There is nothing I love more than baking up a storm in the kitchen over the Christmas period. I especially enjoy when Nathan helps in the kitchen! Above he is pictured with the Yule log for dessert on Christmas Day.

 It was really difficult to roll the Yule log up but it was so tasty (and logs are never 'perfect' anyways!) The filling was cream with orange addded in for flavour and cranberries for colour, texture and taste. Yum!

As gifts to take to family and friends houses over the festive period I made little truffles. Some were covered in coconut and some in coco powder. Everyone's houses were so warm due to the freezing temperatures outside so they had to be kept in the fridge incase they melted!

 I put them in Christmas decorative tins that I had in my supplies for some time. I really liked the ponsetti tins.

My Christmas gift this year was a personalised mug with ingredients in the mug to make the perfect hot chocolate.... including a chocolate peppermint spoon to stir into the hot chocolate. I made these by melting chocolate and dipping plastic spoons into the chocolate and then sprinkling with crushed peppermint candy canes.

 I then tied up little bags of marshmallows and little bags of hot chocolate that I made from a Susan Branch recipe where I combined cocoa powder with a few seasonal spices. It tasted yummy!

 For dessert on Christmas Day I made my Christmas pudding recipe (we still have the second pudding in the cupboard for this coming year!)

Lighting the brandy on the top (and vodka as we used this year) always reminds me of my Dad at Christmas time.

Before Christmas we purchased some Christmas Starbucks blend to put into our coffee machine. I also got a milk frother for Christmas so made some homade holiday cappacinos! (I love my stencils from Crate and Barrell.)

The aero milk frother has been a big success!