The tree is up...
The Christmas cake has been baked...
The Adventkranz is out...

The pudding has been delivered...

The first batch of Vanillekipferl has been made (and devoured!)...


...Christmas is coming!

I'm very excited about Christmas this year, and have lots of foodie plans for the next few weeks.  I'm so proud of our Christmas tree, a real mini-Tannenbaum from Bunnings - cute, huh?  The Christmas cake I've chosen this year is Nigella's classic Christmas cake, and the pudding is the one we made at The Langham's Pudding Making Class earlier this year.  Big thanks to Tina from Media Moguls for delivering it personally!  Can't wait to try it.  I love Christmas pudding.  I'll be doing a proper detailed post about the Christmas cake and Vanillekipferl soon!

I've got a couple of weeks off work for some proper relaxation time - so excited!  So apart from all the cooking, I'm just gonna relax at home and spend time with my friends and family.  What does everyone have planned for the holiday season?

Happy New Year everyone! Hope y'all had a great night last night. We got Pizza Hut for dinner (my other local pizza place was closed!), and went down to Fed Square to see the fireworks. Boy howdy, it was crowded! My new year's resolutions are to eat healthier, exercise more, save money, keep my house clean, and to learn German properly (inserting random Deutsch words into my sentences doesn't count).

Anyhoo, I've still got a couple of Christmas posts to get through, so please enjoy these pics of our Christmas dinner!

All the best for 2009!

xox Sarah


Christmas Dinner for 7


Roast Turkey (How to Eat)
Roast Potatoes (How to Eat)
Red Cabbage
Brussels Sprouts with Pancetta and Chestnuts (Feast)
Baked Carrots
Bread Sauce (How to Eat)
Cranberry Sauce (From a jar)
Gravy (How to Eat)

Christmas Pudding with Brandy Cream (The Roux Brothers on Patisserie)







A few short notes - I wouldn't bother brining the turkey. I tried this last year for a Christmas in July, and it still turned out dry! I just do what Oma Resel in Germany does: cover it in butter, and baste it in beer. I could only find frozen Brussels sprouts and canned chestnuts, so they were a little fluffier and more mealy than I'd normally like. I got my cranberry sauce out of a jar this year. It's easy to make, but expensive, and buying a little jar means you're less likely to waste it. The Christmas pudding was beautiful, but very boozy. My family seemed to like it, but it was quite strong for me. Instead of the brandy cream, I would have preferred plain wHipped cream, or custard.

The table at 6:25pm.

As y'all know, I woke up on Sunday at around 9:30am feeling sick and totally worse for wear. But there was no stopping! Guests were due to arrive at 6:30pm and we had to get the house into shape!

I started the day by chucking last night's pumpkin into the oven. Then we all ate yummy birthday noodles, and got straight into the preparation.


Preparation

I got to work on 2 batches of crème pâtissière. While this was going on, I put my brother and his girlfriend Su on canapé-assembling duty.

Mum sewed the table runner (as you can see in the first photo), and answered the dozens of phone calls from well-wishers.

Culinary disaster struck at around 2pm, when BOTH my batches of crème turned out too runny. Maybe I was being too cautious while cooking the crèmes, maybe I didn't whip the cream enough, maybe I was just fluey and totally out of it. Whatever the reason, after I folded the cream through the crème pâtissière, I ended up with 2 big bowls of runny custard mess.

The annoying thing about this (apart from the 8 wasted eggs), was that the crèmes still tasted so damn good! They just weren't suitable for ball-stuffing. Still, following in the footsteps of my party-planning-role-model Colin Cowie, I tried to keep my cool and when my bro went out to pick up the oysters and the 50 dinner rolls, I asked him to get more eggs, more cream and more milk.


Aah... my toastie. Dan brought back a sandwich for me with the bread rolls and oysters. I shared the sandwich with my mum, and it was pretty much the only substantial food I could stomach all day.


Aah.. that's the way the crème is supposed to look! Thick and gloopy. It goes to the exact right texture when you've folded the whipped cream in. (N.B. blue silicon whisk from Aldi Prahran, only $3!!) I was getting progressively more tense as time went on. You see, the crème takes some time to make, as it has to cool to room temperature before you can add the cream. All you can do is wait!

Well, with that stress out of the way, it was time to fill the balls.
New icing syringe from Cake Deco. If you're interested, the amount of crème that went in the syringe filled about 7 balls at one time.

With balls filled, I melted some plain dark chocolate, and made the caramel for dipping. (Unlike last time, I used plain melted chocolate instead of a ganache, to add extra contrasting crunch). The chocolate takes longer to set than the caramel, so I coated the chocolate balls first.
It was surprisingly speedy coating the balls in caramel. Must have been from all that practise and adrenaline. It was about 4:30pm by this stage, and pressure was mounting.
Luckily the caramel only takes about a nanosecond to harden.

Assembly time! 4:45pm... a lot later than I intended for it to be. As you can see, the supposed spirals weren't perfect, and there were quite a few little gaps, but I filled them with decorations. You'll be able to see them and the finished 'bouche in the next post!



Decorations and Setting Up

While I was covered in hot caramel, my family did an awesome job of setting up everything.


The bathroom, all daily items removed, clean, and adorned with candles and a few flowers from our garden. A very Colin touch, expertly done by my dad!

A beautiful bunch of tulips, a bowl of nuts, and a little plate of candles in the lounge room.

I ordered the tulips online from Roses Only as a birthday gift for mum. I love this company! I was lucky enough to receive a bunch of Roses Only roses for my birthday this year, and they were absolutely stunning - delivered to my front door, beautifully presented in a box with a little bottle of rose oil and some Lindor Chocolates, and some water-treatment to keep them fresh. They were perfect and lasted for over a week. Mum also loved the roses, so I thought she'd like her very own tulips for her birthday! (She does!)

I only finished assembling the entire 'bouche at 5:45 (cutting it very fine, seeing as guests were due to arrive at 6:30), and ran into the shower. On the way in I yelled out, "Can someone put the table runner on the bench????" And when I came out of the bathroom, the bench was cleaned of the day's debris and dramas, and covered in the very festive red table runner. As Colin would say, an instant drab to fab makeover!

A glass bowl, with floating tea-lights in Moroccan teacups and some potpourri petals floating about.


More coming up soon...

Good morning everybody!

Today is the big day. And guess who's not having any alcohol at the party? ME! This morning I woke up with a headache and a wicked sore throat. No prizes for guessing why I'm run down. Although I will add that working in the semi-outdoors in what felt like gale-force winds didn't help. Anyway, I've started my day with honey, tea and panadol, and I will keep myself doped up throughout the day. Obviously, med + alcohol = not good for your health, so if I keep needing panadol throughout the day, there will be no alcohol tonight for me. BOOOO.

And I should quickly mention - we hired 2x18 champagne flutes, 2x18 wine glasses and 18 beer glasses. Dad's bought 12 bottles of champagne, 12 bottles of white, 6 bottles of red (plus extras from Dad's cellar), 1 of campari, 1 of plum wine, and lots of coke/OJ/soda water. I'm bringing out a bottle of Pimm's from my private collection, and I'll have to send my brother out to get cranberry juice to go with it.

Dad is polishing the glassware, we're about to have birthday noodles and I've got some pumpkin roasting in the oven now. Here are some photos from last night. My kitchen looks like an pastry kitchen. YAY!

Last night everything ran smoothly, except for a drama with the sewing machine. As you know, Mum's supposed to be sewing the table runner, and late last night we realised that we'd lent the sewing machine to my aunty months ago and hadn't gotten it back yet. ARGH!!!! Luckily though, our uncle managed to drop it off at our house.... but didn't realise that he hadn't brought the plug for the machine! (So important). So my aunty came around at 12:30am to drop it off. Phew. Crisis averted.

Ok, the cooking.

1 quiche with mushrooms and cheese, ready for the cream/egg mixture.
Kitchen at around 7pm...
Spice mix for pumpkin...

Sweet shortcrust pastry for raspberry/blueberry frangipane tartlets. A last-minute addition to the menu.
Easy to use, lovely to roll out.

Filling the tartlets... no blind baking required.

The kitchen at around 8pm...
Defrosted madeleines!
Risotto. Home delivered at around 8pm. I was not going to cook anything extra for myself. Let the good people at Benedetti's worry about that.
Baked raspberry frangipane tartlets, the first tray (of 3).

Baked quiches and some tartlets.

Inside a raspberry frangipane tartlet. This one was "tested" by my mum and dad!

Decorating supplies, plus the savoury gougeres.
Choux pastry for the croquembouche!!

Baked balls. I only got 70 out of the mixture, which is the perfect amount for 35 people. As you know, "we recommend 2 balls per person". Mum says "of course, lah, otherwise people walk lopsided!".
Anyway, I didn't think there would be enough balls to cover my cone, so I whipped up another 1/4 batch. The Roux Brothers' recipe says it makes 110 balls. I must have bigger balls than them.
Testing to see if they'll cover...


Leftover bit of Careme sweet shortcrust pastry. Cook's treat!

Pumpkin. Spiced, ready for roasting.

Excess pastry shells. Not enough frangipane to go around.

My kitchen at around midnight... (notice: boiled beans for a canape, gladwrapped madeleines, 3 quiches cooling, raspberry/blueberry frangipane tartlets cooling, choux balls + tower).

And now it begins again!

Who ever thought I'd be doing a whole post on decor and decorations? Not me! How things have changed since I started cooking. Nowadays I am totally obsessed with party planner to the stars Colin Cowie, and I am loving the process of choosing and making party decorations. In his lifestyle bible, Colin Cowie Chic (ooh, the cover is textured, like a crocodile-skin wallet. Such attention to detail!), Colin suggests that you choose a theme for your party and stick with it, right from the invitations, through to table settings, and to the dessert.

My mum's favourite colour is red! So that's a start. Obviously, just red won't look good, so we decided on a colour scheme of red and gold. (I know, could we be any more Asian?)

For the invitations, I had a few good walks around Kikki K, Pepe's Paperie and Riot Art and Craft for inspiration. With a bunch of good ideas, my bro and I had a bit of an Art Attack, and made them ourselves. We bought some sheets of red cardboard, red DL size envelopes, gold heart stickers, and pearly translucent paper. We cut the red card into 3, printed the invitation text on the translucent paper, and stuck the translucent paper onto the red card with the gold heart stickers. Then we sent them out. I didn't get a photo, and we've sent them all now, but they did look pretty good, even if I do say so myself.

The first photo in this post is of a sugar rosebud, from Cake Deco. I bought 5 of them (at $3.90 each - faint!) to decorate the croquembouche, and a few other supplies to assist with my croque-making. I found out from the staff that styrofoam cones don't come larger than 25cm in height. D'oh! So I'll either have to go free-form with my croque, buy a $100 metal mould, or fashion one out of cardboard and staplers, MacGyver style.

Stiff-syringe-icing set (easier than piping bags for injecting choux puffs), gold cachous, sugar rosebuds in the box, red ribbon.

The next day I went to Spotlight, for more supplies.

2 bunches of fake roses - only $2 a bunch! I'll be using a few of these around the bottom of the croque. They're not expensive like sugar or real roses, and are easier to maintain. At the shop, I hadn't decided if I'd definitely use them, but they were cheap, and I figured that they'd look pretty festive in a vase in the corner even if I didn't end up using them for croque decoration.


4.5 metres of red cloth. It's going to be a table runner for our island bench in the kitchen. I'll get mum to sew the ends in. Napery can be so expensive, but if you have basic sewing skills and a machine, you can save a lot of money and get more creative with your table settings. (I have no sewing skills whatsoever, but I'm very, very lucky that my mum does!)


More decoration stuff...

In the background we have a 2-tiered cake stand, which I picked up for $10 on sale at Matchbox.

These are some little teacups that we got as a gift from a family friend who used to own a Lebanese restaurant. Their gold colour fits in with our theme, and we can fill them with tea-light candles!

Now, speaking of candles, Colin says (yes, this will be a recurring theme) that having lots and lots of candles creates a great atmosphere for a night-time party, making everyone look younger and "as if they've just come back from somewhere fabulous". Sounds good to me! Dimming the lights and lighting candles will take our kitchen and lounge room from "drab to fab in an instant!" Excellent entertaining and home-organisation advice aside, those ostentatious little phrases are another reason I just love Colin.

I put my brother and his girlfriend on candle duty. Daniel is arty, and Su loves candles! They went to Ikea and came back with the following...

1. Potpourri

For strewing about the place. Scented flowers and candles are generally a no-no at a gathering where food is served, but it's going to be spread out, and potpourri never really gives off a strong scent unless you stick your nose right in it.


2. Little black plates for arranging candles. I LOVED these plates! Good work Dan & Su!


3. Candles in various sizes, and the essential tea-lights.



There are only 3 more sleeps to go until the party! Yay!