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Thursday, January 21, 2010

Christmas


This is my long overdue Christmas post, and now since it's so late, it's been condensed. I'll try to share my favorite recipes in time for next year.

So, I did do some baking this year, which was unexpected. I had been working so much, I didn't think I would have any time to. I didn't make all the regulars, but I think I did most of them. I missed out on Nanaimo Bars and Shortbread...but I have a million sugar cookies left over. I did two batches because it took that many tries to get a hang of decorating with royal icing. My first attempts were pretty ugly - but these are getting there...




Though I still have containers full of sugar cookies in my fridge.

I did a favorite of Hubby's - chocolate covered pretzles. Those take forever, but they are so good! I crushed up some Werther's Originals and candy canes to sprinkle on top.


I did a rocky road fudge (the Canadian version) and chocolate marshmallows too. The marshmallows were so good! Rocky Road in Australia means something awful - they add these weird red jelly ju-jube bits to the peanuts and marshmallow. It's gross. It makes Rocky Road more suitable for kids instead of adults, in my mind at least.

I made my Grandmother's Jam-Jam recipe too, and we are still enjoying those as well. They keep really well, and seem to get better with age. The jam keeps them nice and moist. I changed it up, and added some sanding sugar for decoration. These are quite small - bite sized, but I did plain regular sized ones as well.


I made buttertarts too, and those were a hit, surprisingly. I love them, even though I'm usually not a fan of raisins in baking, along with a lot of other people. I wasn't sure if the Australians would like these, but most said these were their favorite item. I just came across this blog post! Perfect! And now these are on my list...

Next year I am going to bake smaller batches of everything, or give more away. I gave some away for gifts, but still ended up with too much left over. I say this every year though. Here's an example of the baskets I made up:


I also decorated a tree, which was an unexpected activity too. First off, we don't have many decorations, as they are still in Canada, and we also didn't have a fake tree. They are pretty expensive out here. I ended up getting a coupon in the mail for $40 off if you spend $100, AND I waited so long to get decorations, everything was 50% off! I barely managed to spend the hundred bucks, but ended up with a 6' tree, lights, and decorations galore! It wasn't up for that long, but next year I will be ahead of the game.





We had a nice family dinner on Christmas Eve, and spent time together at the beach on Christmas Day. We played lots of games over the holidays and had a great time relaxing. As usual, it goes really fast though, and I didn't feel like we had much of a holiday at all. Christmas is so different here. It's still a great time, I just miss home the most at Christmas.




We also had a small showing of homemade fireworks :)

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