More Christmas Culinary Delights

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day brought with them more opportunities to try out some more new recipes which I had found at none-other-than Pinterest! And so continued the Christmas Culinary extravaganza.

Christmas Eve I made a delicious peach and fig salad with raspberry balsamic dressing - sorry no photos of this one I was too busy eating the lobster tails in lemongrass butter, scallops three ways, chilli coriander prawns, peanut brittle salad, and the trio of desserts to take photos. And that doesn't even mention the amazing starters my sister made - baked brie with cherry salsa and homemade biscotti - which I do have a photo of care-of my sister and Facebook.

Christmas Day we shared brunch with my husbands family and we took buttermilk pancakes, strawberry mimosa's and the star - Strawberry Bruschetta. Yum! They turned out delicious and a perfect combination of sweet and savoury for brunch. Even better, it was red and green for Christmas.

The Strawberry Bruschetta Recipe:
Combine 1 cup of sliced strawberries and 1 tablespoon of sugar in a small bowl; toss to combine.  Let the berries macerate for about 30 minutes so that they begin to release their juices.  Spread a thin layer of goat cheese (I used South Cape) on top of each slice of the french baguette.  Top each slice with spoonfuls of the strawberry mixture.  Drizzle lightly with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  Top each slice with the minced basil leaves and cracked pepper, to taste (I forgot about the pepper - it was still amazing).

This was the first combination of stawberries and basil for Christmas Day, but not the last. And all were delicious.

For Christmas Day Dinner we had family over at our place for a casual dinner after a day full of eating. My In-Laws cooked the turkey, I re-made the peach and fig salad, and my sister-in-law made shortbreads. For starters I made Sugared Cranberries with Brie and Mint. Once again this was a super easy recipe and tasted delicious.

The Sugared Cranberries with Brie & Mint Recipe:

For the sugared cranberries: 

2 cups fresh cranberries 

1 cup good maple syrup

1 cup granulated sugar

Rinse cranberries and place in a medium bowl. Heat syrup in a small sauce pan just until warm. Pour over cranberries when syrup is warm, not hot, or cranberries may pop. Cool, cover, and let soak in the refrigerator overnight. 

Drain cranberries in a colander. Place sugar in a large bowl or baking dish. Add cranberries in 2 batches and roll around until lightly coated in sugar. Place on a baking sheet until dry, about 1 hour. Store in an airtight container.

To assemble:

16 crackers

225g Brie cheese

Cranberry chutney or cranberry sauce

Fresh mint for garnish

Assemble crackers with one slice of brie, a light layer of cranberry chutney, and 2 or 3 sugared cranberries. Garnish with fresh mint sprigs. 

Once again the result was delicious -sweet and savory, with a burst of cranberry when you bit into the sugared little gems on top. And Christmas colours abounded once more. 

A couple of notes about this recipe - here in Australia it is not possible to get fresh cranberries (apparently we don't have the right "swamplands" to cultivate them. It is also very difficult to find frozen cranberries. But I was super excited to find a single container left in the freezer section of our Green Grocer the Saturday before Christmas. I literally pushed people out of the way lunging for those little red gems in the freezer. It was Combat-Christmas-Shopping at its best. Also I had a heap of cranberries left over from this recipe - maybe my brie slices were too small and so I could only fit 2 cranberries per cracker. I will be scouring Pinterest for some other recipes for sugared cranberries in the next day or so before they have to be thrown away.

Finally, on Christmas night I made Pavlovas with Strawberries, Vanilla Cream and Basil Coulis. I had spotted this pin a couple of months ago and when it was time to drastically prune my basil plant, and I still had over 1 cup of basil leaves after making pesto, I remembered this recipe and decided it would look great for Christmas dessert.

I decided I would make the basil coulis first, for 2 reasons - 1. I had a huge container of basil in the fridge, and 2. I was most sceptical about this component of the recipe tasting good.

The Basil Coulis Recipe:
Blanch 1/3 cup of basil leaves in a small saucepan of boiling water for 30 seconds.
Drain and transfer basil to bowl over ice to stop cooking. Squeeze out excess water from basil.
Purée basil with 1/2 cup of corn or agave syrup in blender. Cover and chill at least 2 hours or overnight to allow flavours to develop.
Bring basil coulis to room temperature and strain through a fine mesh strainer before serving.

I was impressed with how easy this component of the dish was to make and also how rich the basil taste was in the coulis. I didn't strain the coulis before serving - I ran out of time and I really don't think it would have changed the dish all that much.

My wonderful hubby made the strawberry coulis component a couple of days before Christmas when I was exhausted. This component was also very easy and super delicious.

The Strawberry Coulis Recipe:

Purée 1/2 pint of strawberries and 1 tablespoon of sugar in processor until smooth. Heat the purée over medium-low heat until syrup forms, about 3 minutes.

We stored this in the fridge in a sterilised jar for 4 days.

For the mini pavlovas I hit a problem. Using the recipe from the pin I found I ended up with very burnt mini pavlovas. Pinterest Fail! So I called on my sister, who is known as the pavlova and meringue queen in my family, and used her recipe - a much better result!

The Mini Pavlovas Ingredients:
3 large egg whites
220g castor sugar
1.5 tsp cornflour
1 tsp white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp pure vanilla (or extract)

The Mini Pavlovas Recipe:
Preheat the oven to 150 degrees
Grease 2 large baking trays & line them with baking paper.
Whisk the egg whites until soft peaks form
Gradually beat in the castor sugar & continue to beat until the meringue is stiff
Fold in the cornflour, then the vinegar and vanilla (don't "over fold" or the meringue will collapse)
Mould the meringe into 4-6 (I usually make them smaller so more like 8-10) small 'nests' making the edges slightly higher than the centre
Bake 30 mins then turn over off and leave in for a further 30 mins. Cool on rack.

I made the mini pavlovas 2 days before hand and stored them in an airtight container and I used castor sugar which had vanilla beans sitting in it for the last 6 months instead of using pure vanilla. The pavlovas were beautiful and again despite the first failed attempt they were quite quick and easy to make when I had a good recipe to follow.

To make the vanilla cream you combine 3/4 cup of thickened cream and 1 tablespoon of sugar, scrape in seeds from 1/2 a vanilla bean (I actually used a whole bean) and beat cream until soft peaks form.

Finally, to assemble the mini pavlovas:

Divide the vanilla cream and place in the center of each meringue disc.

Top each with halved strawberries.

Spoon strawberry coulis and basil coulis around the pavlova circle and over the strawberries.

Sprinkle with crushed pistachios (I totally forgot about this component of the recipe until I started writing up this blog post - it was still amazing). Serve immediately.

These were delicious. I am quite in awe of how beautifully strawberries and basil go together in desserts and savoury dishes. They were 2 perfect ingredients for bringing the Christmas colours to the table and the plate and the flavours complimented so deliciously in each pairing.

So, what did you make for your Christmas Culinary Extravaganza?

Christmas Baking

Who doesn't like some sweet treats around Christmas time?! And so far this Christmas I have had quite a few opportunities to try out some more of the delicious looking sweets recipes I have seen on Pinterest! With a family morning tea which included my Grandma and her 10 Great Grandchildren!!, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to try the white chocolate covered oreo's with peppermint pin I saw a few months ago.

Once again I am loving recipes with 3 ingredients!

The Ingredients:
Oreo cookies
White chocolate
Candy canes (the original recipe called for peppermint sprinkles, but I didn't have those so I chopped up candy canes which at this time of year seem to breed in the pantry and in my children's sticky little hands).

And I love recipes which take no time at all!

The Recipe:
Dip the Oreo in melted white chocolate, place on a baking sheet and sprinkle with crushed candy canes. Let set in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.

Enjoy!! Though beware...

The Danger:
Stopping after just 1!

For the family christmas morning tea I also made the Oreo Truffles I made a few weeks ago, but with the Christmas twist of sprinkling the white chocolate coated truffles with crushed candy cane!

The Results:
Stunning and festive!

Now none of this was gluten-free, so for my Mum I also made some peppermint bark in Christmas cookie cutters. Again it was super simple and super quick to prepare and looked pretty great too.

There was only one real problem that I ran into with all these recipes.

The Pitfall:
The 30 degree Sydney Summer heat yesterday led to some rapid melting. But we did manage to find a solution...

The Solution: 
Eat them really fast!

What are you baking for a sweet treat this Christmas?

Hand Painted Christmas Wrap

Once again Pinterest has inspired a craft project with my kids. I saw this pin for graffiti gift wrap created by the blogger's kids. I was impressed the blogger had let her kids undertake this craft activity in what appeared to be the living room of their house or apartment in Dallas-Fort Worth. Seeing how my son painted himself as much as the paper - not to mention me, the exterior wall on the house, balcony railing, outdoor plastic furniture and the window - I was certainly glad to have a backyard for this project!

And what fun we had! Once I had convinced Beau I really did want him to paint the large roll of paper on the ground (he seemed surprisingly reluctant to put brush to paint to paper...?), he dove in and started painting and splogging away. Then he accidentally painted my arm, and all attention was off the paper and onto painting himself! And everything in the vicinity! Thank goodness for washable finger paints!

But with Beau's splogges and finger painting, a few stars and spirals from me, we had some pretty great looking gift wrap paintings. (It just got too messy to photograph during the red painting)!

Whilst Beau took his nap these sheets of art turned into Christmas wrapping! Merry Christmas!!

I wonder whose doorstep these presents will arrive on...?

Santa visit

Well its that time of year again, and it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. New York is a wonderful city to be in for Christmas: 5th Ave is adorned with beautiful Christmas lights; Macy's windows display an amazing Christmas-time story; and there is the possibility of a white Christmas.

This is our second Christmas in New York, but our first attempt at a Santa visit here. For Noah's previous 2 Christmas' we visited Santa at The Grove in LA. The first was when he was only 6 days old! On both occasions, visiting Santa was a magical experience and the whole ordeal was well practiced production, in true Hollywood fashion. Santa was gorgeous:

He was dressed all in fur

from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished

with ashes and soot. (...ok not really)

His eyes how they twinkled!

His dimples how merry!

His cheeks were like roses,

his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth

was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard on his chin

was as white as the snow! (And real!)

He had a broad face

and a round little belly

That shook when he laughed

like a bowl full of jelly.

On both occasions we received a Christmas songs CD and a DVD entitled "My visit with Santa at The Grove" (and if I could work out how to upload the DVD to Blogger I would put it here so you could see it). Santa sat in a Candy Wonderland house straight from the North Pole, on a velvet throne and with elaborately adorned elves and helpers busily assisting him in pixie shoes and elf hats, hooped skirts and laden-hose-type shorts.

Our LA Santa experiences have been magical, but like visiting Santa in Australia, a large man, dressed all in fur seems a little out of place amidst the 25-30 degree weather outside. So this year, on a day when the temperature reached a high of 6 degrees, and a low of -1, we decided to seek out Santa in New York City. We headed to the upper East Side to Bloomingdales, where we had heard we could avoid the crowds of the Macy's Santa experience, but still have a wonderful photo in "Santa Land" on the 8th floor.

So after catching the F train uptown and finding Bloomingdales, packed to the rafters with pre-Christmas shoppers, we navigated our way to "Santa Land". This was our first disappointment. It was the smaller than Noah's bedroom and the decorations consisted of an arch which read "Santa Land Happy Holidays". Santa's throne sat in front of a window full of children's sized mannequins with just one santa hat between them and one small Christmas ornament at their feet.

Then the second disappointment - the elves were middle-aged woman in green vests over their usual Bloomingdales uniform. No elf hats, no pixie shoes with upturned toes, no elf costumes. We could however see a bright red suit sitting on a thrown through the crowd and so brushed aside our initial disappointment and joined the small line, saying to ourselves, "Well at least the line is short".

Then the third disappointment - one of the "elves" told us their camera equipment was not working, so we were welcome to use our own cameras. Of course all we had on us was am iphone or blackberry camera, neither of which were ideal, but we said to ourselves, "Well at least the line is short."

Then the fourth disappointment - Santa. No fur. No rosy cheeks - in fact we couldn't see is cheeks or nose or twinkling eyes for all the fake beard and hair plastered lopsided on his face.

All that said, Noah still got excited when he saw Santa. He refused to sit on his lap, but he was happy to sit with Daddy and have a photo with Santa, and he has continued to talk about Santa all afternoon. He tells us Santa is coming down the elevator (as we lack the traditional chimney), that he is bringing presents and toys, and that Noah is going to get a fire-engine. He is also quite proud of the mini colouring book Santa gave him after his photo.

I guess in the end, the disappointments were all Mummy & Daddy's and the most important thing is that for Noah the magic of Christmas is starting to come to life.

"Merry Christmas to all

And to all a Good Night!"