Making Christmas

It's nearly Christmas!! James and I decided to have a Chrsitmassy weekend.

On Friday we made mulled wine. But I wasn't thinking about the blog at this point so no pictures or recipe for you. I did make a video about the mulled wine I made last year, in case you're interested. It's not exactly a tutorial though, more of a sound project. The sounds I edited to the video illustrate the movement that's implied by the juxtaposition of the still images. Or something.

Anywho, we made Christmas this weekend.

On Saturday, we had to ice the Christmas cakes. I have three. One for myself, one for James and one for my sister, Sadie. I did make one for my mother but she's going to ice her own. To make Royal Icing, we mix Icing Sugar with egg white. Some people put lemon juice in it too, but I've only ever bothered to if I've made it too thick. We decided that we think about 6 ounces of sugar per egg white might be enough. If not, I'd add more sugar.
I stirred the sugar into the white, then beat it with the electric whisk. I had in my head that one egg's worth is quite a lot, but I was quite wrong so we put in another egg white and more sugar and that looked more like how much we probably wanted.
Then I put blobs of icing onto the cakes and we spread them out with big plastic spoons.

 
I made a pretty swirl on top of James's cake with the back of a spoon. After we'd done the tops, we went round the edges (a little more carefully). The icing would have been better a little bit thicker, I think. It was a bit runny round the edges.

Turned out it wasn't quite enough icing. At this point we had to leave the cakes to set with a view to finishing them later on, because I had to go and buy stuff for my car (but more on that next time).

After we'd been to Halfords (and the haberdashers, where I bought a mask that I'll tell you about another time, and been to see my mother who kindly gave us our dinner) we made another batch of icing. We put a couple of tablespoons more sugar in it this time. James iced the edges of Sadie's cake and I re did the top of mine (it wasn't very flat). I made it flat by dragging a long spoon handle across the top.

There was some icing left, but more on that later.

We made mince pies. We emptied a jar of mincemeat into a bowl. The we added candied peel (even though there's already some in there), ginger (even though there's already some of that too), cinnamon and rum.

I have made pastry about twice in the last ten years. Turns out I can't remember how to do it. I'm sure that when I was at school I was quite good at it. I think I didn't put enough water in it at first. I probably should have also remembered not to use the self raising flour.

Anyway, cut two sizes of rounds. Put the big rounds in the greased tin, the mincemeat inside, then wet the edges and put the little rounds on top, squishing them to seal the pies. Then stab them with a fork and put them in the oven.

I can't remember how much pastry we made. I do remember being surprised that it didn't make very many pies. When my mother makes mince pies, she always makes herself a ball of pastry, which she cuts open and eats with butter while it's still hot. I made one each for myself and James because it sounded like a good idea. It was.

While the pies were in the oven, we started on the marzipan Christmas trees. This should be something to do with the marzipan left over from the cakes, but there wasn't any so we bought a new block of it just for these, and that's why there's so many. James got bored with the traditional cone shape and made some very unorthodox trees.

Then the pies were done. I really ought to buy some plain flour. They taste good though. James took this picture; apparently the pie is heroic (something about it looking SO homemade)

Back to the trees. Remember the icing? We put in some green food dye. And then we put a blob of icing on each tree (except not all of them, because James had other plans for the rest of the marzipan).

Then we have to smooth the icing down all the trees so they're completely covered. And we put on some sprinkles to look like bauballs. If you just drop them on they won't stick. Dip your finger tip in water, then in the sprinkles, then push them into the icing. Then they stick.

After that I had some green icing left so I decided to draw a Christmas tree on Sadie's cake, like so. I textured it with a fork, but then I had to redo that after it had set a little. I made a star out of marzipan. Cute, eh? I also put some fudge pieces (tiny ones) on it for tree decorations, but I don't seem to have a picture of that.

On Sunday, we made a chocolate log. I put a glass dish on top of a pan of hot water from the kettle. We put the chocolate in it and stirred until it had all melted. Then we poured it over a chocolate swiss roll and spread it out with a spoon.

I ran over the chocolate with a fork to make it look like a log, then we decorated it with marzipan Christmas Trees and sprinkled some icing sugar on it to look like snow.

James used the leftover chocolate to coat the rest of our marzipan trees. You might notice we've eaten some of the others by this point. That's because they're awesome.

Finally, I don't have a Christmas tree. I also don't really have room for one. So I made one on my cupboard door out of post-it notes. Like this:

I tied ribbon onto some bauballs and taped them onto the cupboard door, so that the tape would be hidden under my post-its.

Then I cut a star out of foam and stuck it onto the cupboard with a loop of tape.

Merry Christmas!!