The Gallery: It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

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I seem to be running short of time to do The Gallery most weeks at the moment and to my shame, I had no idea what the theme was this week until Tara's e-mail dropped into my inbox at 6pm this evening. When I glanced at the theme I knew that I'd be able to easily take part as I'd uploaded these photos last night to Instagram.

For me, it always feels that Christmas is on the way when we get our 6 foot high and 4 foot wide Christmas tree out of the attic and assemble it on the first weekend of December. This is the gold, red and wooden decoration tree and the main one of the house. It's a big family affair decorating this tree with my doing the top, The Boy doing the bottom (under a teenie-weenie bit of direction) and Mr. TBaM doing the back.

These are my favourite decorations on the tree:

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A mixture of twee characters, home-made wreaths by The Boy and the robin which always nestled in my own childhood Christmas tree. I've bought The Boy one to have on his tree in the future.

Carefully unwrapping the treasures of Christmasses past is such a joy; watching The Boy discover his own decorations which we have bought him every Christmas brings back a rush of memories from each festive season.

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Hopefully his future partner will like the decorations and allow him to use them on their tree when he's an adult!

Incidentally, I'm trying to start a hashtag on Instagram so I can have a nosey at the glitz and glamour on other trees. I'd love it if you'd join in? Search on #showmeyourdecorations.

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Christmas Tree Stained-Glass Window

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A few months ago I posted about our stained-glass butterfly picture and it proved very popular with both The Boy and people reading my blog. The picture stayed up until a month ago when the tissue paper had faded too much to be effective.

We've made a Christmas tree version for the festivities and I wanted to share it.

Christmas tree

You can find a christmas tree stained glass window template here if interested.

Christmas Bakewell Tarts

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I wanted to try a different version of an old favourite combining different elements of several cakes that are sumptuous and decadent: the frangipance of bakewell tarts, the richness of the currant mix in mince pies and the melted marzipan inside a Simnel cake. With those in mind, I've created my own Christmas Bakewell Tarts.

Ingredients:

  • Shortcrust pastry:
    • 125g/4oz plain flour
    • pinch of salt
    • 55g/2oz butter, cubed
    • 30-45ml/2-3 tbsp cold water
    • 2oz ground almonds
    • 1oz caster sugar
  • currants, raisins and cherries roughly chopped in a food processor for thirty seconds (I'm using this instead of mincemeat as The Boy doesn't like that)
  • marzipan

  1. Make the shortcrust pastry in the traditional way (rub butter, flour, salt, sugar and almonds together, then add a few drops of water at a time until it binds together).
  2. Cut out circles and place them into a small muffin tin. Trim off the excess pastry and put a layer of baking beads over the base and cook for 8 minutes at 180°C.
  3. While this is blind-baking in the oven, make the frangipane mix.
  4. Cream the sugar and butter, add the eggs, mix in the flour and ground almonds, with a teaspoon of almond essence. Mix thoroughly.
  5. Once the tart cases have cooked, remove the baking beads carefully (they're hot!) and place a small circle of marzipan in each one.
  6. Place a teaspoon of currant mix on top, and then put a spoonful of frangipane mix on the top of each tart case.
  7. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 180°C until a skewer/knife comes out clean.
  8. Sift icing sugar over the top.

mince pies

For a change I thought I'd video this cooking session. Mainly because cooking with a three year old is fun and I wanted to share that.

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Linking up to Recipe of The Week

Christmas Cornflake Cakes

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Cornflake cakes are a far better no-cook cake than crispie cakes, the crunch is much better and they don't fall apart so easily! We decided to make some the other day but jazzed them up a little bit especially for Christmas.

You'll need:

  • cornflakes
  • chocolate
  • golden syrup
  • raisins

christmas recipes

  1. Melt the chocolate in a bain marie (or bowl over hot water).
  2. Remove from the heat and pour into a large bowl coating the cornflakes and not leaving any residual chocolate in the base. If there's too much chocolate, add some more cornflakes.
  3. Squeeze in some golden syrup, this helps to bind the cake together and give a smoother texture. Stir in the raisins.
  4. Scoop into cupcake cases and leave to set.
  5. Once set, we sprayed ours with edible gold spray paint and sprinkled on multi-coloured candy buttons to resemble bauble.

christmas recipes

 

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'Counting Down To Christmas' is a craft bloggers link-up held each week in the eight weeks preceeding the big day itself. Each week we will be posting a different Christmas craft activity.

This week the co-hosts are Rainy Day Mum ~ Making Boys Men ~ Here Come the Girls ~ TheBoyandMe

If you have any Christmas Recipes for or that you have made with kids please link below


Advent Activity Calendar

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When I finish work every Friday lunchtime I have great intentions about the craft and play activities I can do with The Boy for the forthcoming four days until I return to work, yet by Wednesday I have failed miserably!

However, tomorrow the festive season starts and I am buggered damned if I am missing out on the opportunity to do great activities with The Boy each day, even more so since I saw this post on Domestic Goddesque the other day. So in pure 'borrowing' style, I have compiled a planner of Advent Activities for us to complete each day which hopefully should see us embrace the seasonal cheer.

What Christmas activities do you have planned?