More Christmas Cooking - Gingerbread Cookies!

Back in 1999 I returned to Canada for the last xmas and new year's of the 20th century, spending two weeks with my sister-in-law's family in snowy Prince George, BC. Arriving a few days before xmas, my husband and I had the opportunity to help out with the decoration of the gingerbread cookies. We thought the cookies were so delicious and the family evening so much fun that we decided that gingerbread cookies would from then on be part of our annual tradition too. Though we no longer try to decorate the cookies individually (for instance, transforming the gingerbread ladies into a recognisably Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield) we still enjoy the tradition and take pride in our creations! This recipe has been tried annually and remains true.

6 cups self-raising flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp baking powder

4 tsp ground ginger, 4 tsp cinnamon, 1 1/2 tsp ground clove, 1 tsp salt

1 cup butter (NB for some reason the past 2 years we have added an extra 2 oz butter as the mix seemed dryer than usual); 1 cup dark brown sugar (packed)

2 large eggs, 1 cup molasses (or treacle) 

First mix dry ingredients in a large bowl.

In a separate large bowl mix butter and brown sugar.

 

Creaming until fluffy...

Add eggs and molasses

Gradually add dry ingredients to wet mix, 

stirring after each dry addition.

Divide mixture and form into several balls.

Wrap in cling film (Saran Wrap) and refrigerate for an hour.

Preheat oven to 350 F/180 C. Roll out dough on floured surface and cut into shapes.

We use dinosaur cutters as well as Winnie-the-Pooh and traditional xmas cutters. Make the most of the rolled dough! Bake 8-10 mins.

Cool cookies -

- before decorating! The icing I use for decorating is a simple glace - icing sugar mixed with a bit of boiled water and various food colourings. I use sandwich bags with a tiny corner cut as decorating bags (discard when finished). This recipe makes well over 100 cookies (I think I counted 180 this year) depending on the sizes of your cutters. Store in a cookie tin or freeze some for later. They are great holiday treats but we also include them with our xmas gifts.

Hallowe'en!

As well as all the excitement of carving pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns every October,

it is the season for me to take out last year's pumpkin mush from the freezer and make a few batches of muffins. These get decorated as jack-o-lanterns too and get sent into school and/or Girl Guides with my daughter for her and her friends. If I have enough mush, I can make additional batches of muffins for sharing around elsewhere.

So after Hallowe'en night, the carved pumpkins get chopped and peeled and cut up into small cubes or rectangles.

A large orange (or several small ones or clementines) and a lemon are peeled and juiced. The juice and a tiny bit of water are added to the pot of pumpkin cubes (the pumpkin release a lot of water when cooking). The peel is cut into slivers

and added to the pot. Cook this gently on low-medium heat, stirring periodically, in a large heavy-bottomed saucepan.

When all the pumpkin is cooked, it is soft enough to be mashed. Tilt the pot a bit to see how much liquid there is; if there is a lot of liquid, raise the heat to boil some of it off,

The pumpkin mush needs to be moist in order to give moisture and flavour to future pumpkin muffins. I will give the recipe for the muffins in another post, but if you can't wait, use pumpkin mush in the same recipes that you use for carrot cake or banana bread. Compare the picture below to the picture above to get an idea of how much liquid should not be left in the final mush.

I packed the mush into equal size freezer bags. In the past I have used weights of 350 g and 500 g, which also work fine in my recipes for muffins, and also in pumpkin pie (I'll give a recipe for that in a future post too). So it is a little bit random that these packs are 450 g but I figured it was a reasonable amount when I was packing and weighing. I put the 3 bags of mush into an additional freezer bag but will only use one bag at a time. One bag of mush will happily be used in a recipe that makes about 5 dozen small muffins or 2 pies.

More Shinrinyoku!

We are getting lots of gorgeous days, plenty of time for shinrinyoku (Japanese for "a walk in the woods for relaxation"). A few weeks ago we had passed a road sign for Knocksink Woods and had never been there, so Saturday we decided to explore - it was less than 10 mins by car from our house! The woods were fabulous, with all kinds of gnarly trees and exposed roots continuous up the side of the mountain.

 The Glencullen River passes through these woods, and there are lots of little waterfalls, and what I would describe as a creek. Of course I brought my sketchbook and trusty watercolour pencils. I found a rock to sit on beneath a bridge and opened my sketchbook...

We crossed the bridge to walk back on the other side of the river and were stunned that areas of wild garlic were as far as the eye could see, providing ground cover in the woods.

Of course I had to pick some and made two more batches of pesto (using walnuts this time) dividing in meal-size portions for the recently defrosted freezer. Yum!

Happy Christmas!

The Irish Times had a competition about Christmas baubles, and after we did the tree decorating, I entered this picture. My Mum had given me the pink ball, along with a number of other family decorations, when she and my Dad returned to Ireland in 1983. She had initially received the decoration from her Mum when she emigrated to Canada in 1958 and remembers the decoration from her own childhood -- it has certainly stood the test of time! I brought the decoration with me in 1993 when I firmly moved to Ireland myself and it has been on my tree annually since then. I didn't win the competition, but must have been a runner-up as my picture and blurb were printed in the newspaper on Monday with only a few of the other entries.

Every time I bake something for xmas, I think it is the last thing I have to bake. My traditions though seem to never end! Yesterday I made the butter tarts, which have become an annual taste event for a few years now.

As if we don't have enough Christmas traditions in our house, I have watched a number of candy cane making videos and am seriously thinking of co-opting this as a tradition for future years! I thought this video particularly good as it gave the recipe and the woman is making them in a regular kitchen. They are truly home made!

"Ingredients: (this made 15 decent size candy canes, filled one jar with small candies, and still had some left over)

700g sugar
300g glucose syrup (corn syrup)
1/3 - 1/2 cup of water
1 teaspoon of cream of tartar (can be left out if you can't find it)
1-2 teaspoons of peppermint extract/essence
Red food colouring

Will keep for a couple of days. Keep away from humid spots. I stored mine in the fridge :) "

Happy Christmas and a Healthy & Safe New Year!

Pre-Christmas Cooking!

While technically I began my xmas cooking in September, as I made quite a bit of damson chutney and knew I would be giving some of it away, the idea of xmas cooking really begins when I start the puddings - once Hallowe'en is over and done with. My husband was also decanting the plum liqueur around this time, so with all the leftover fruit, I made a few jars of plum vodka jam. The alcohol cooks off, but there is a nice bitter flavour left, which makes the jam more like a marmalade.

Two large and two small finished puddings. We always have a pudding for my husband's birthday (Dec 8) instead of cake.

Before the end of November I made the annual tried and true apricot-pineapple with almonds jam. A couple of them will be wrapped and given away.

Quite a lot of damson liqueur was made, the by-product being lots of alcoholic fruit. Since the plum vodka jam was very tasty, I knew exactly what to do with the leftover fruit! Again, some of this will be given away at Christmas!

There was a teacher's strike day on Dec 2, which was great timing for us as we had our family day of making gingerbread cookies. We decorated them the next day and sorted out everyone's rations!:)

I was thinking that the cranberry clementine with brazil nuts was the last pre-xmas item on my list...

...but then I remembered I had to make the custard to go with the birthday pudding (and put some in the freezer for New Year's). Since egg whites don't go into custard, they are used to make coconut maccaroons, an annual Christmas treat that stays at home!

Damsons & Blackberries!

We had a fantastic summer and we continue to have a fantastic autumn! Last Sunday and the Sunday before we had gone for afternoon family strolls in the woods up the side of Bray Head with the express purpose of collecting blackberries. Now there are plenty of pie-sized blackberry packages in the freezer for future use, and I made my first blackberry-apple pie of the season. Delicious with cream...

My husband and daughter kept spotting all the different types of mushrooms...

We don't know which ones are edible, but hopefully will find out soon as my husband is going on an organised foraging walk this Sunday with the experts.

I love mushrooms, but certainly am no fool. Every time I see mushrooms in the wild I am reminded of the film The Beguiled (starring Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page) and the sorry ending Clint had...

Yesterday a rural friend invited my husband and I down to her place to enjoy the morning picking damsons. Her tree was the motherlode! My husband affixed a ladder to the tree and was wholeheartedly picking when our friend had a great idea...

...he could prune the tree and we could pick damsons at ground level!

We went home with a bushel of damsons and a few apples to complement blackberries in a soon-to-be-made pie. I've now got damsons stewing for jam, my husband has started several bottles of damson liqueur and is going to start some damson wine today. Oh halcyon days of autumn!

Elderflowers and Rose Petals!

Summer's here, hurray! Time to prepare for the winter, hahaha. We discovered a few years ago that as well as our annual blackberry foraging, there are things to do with flower petals that are very delicious. I help with the collecting, and my husband makes non-alcoholic cordials and wines from rose petals, gorse flowers, elderflowers and elderberries.  Catch the elderflowers before they are all gone. They only bloom for a few weeks in June, but they are versatile and magnificent!

My husband makes a beautiful wine and a non-alcoholic cordial from elderflowers. He has already made a batch of cordial (we drank one bottle and 2 other small bottles are in the freezer) and prepared a gallon of wine. But the weather has been so nice and the flowers are not gone yet, so we went out this morning and got some more bunches for another batch of wine (which tastes  similar to ice wine, verrrrry nice). For the cordial you need 6-8 heads of elderflower in full bloom, 1 pint water, zest & juice of 2 lemons and 175 g caster sugar. Stir sugar and water over medium heat till sugar dissolves; add elderflower heads and bring to boil for 5 mins. Remove from heat and add lemon juice and zest. Cover and leave to infuse 24 hours before straining and bottling. Dilute to taste (sparkling water or prosecco!). For the cordial the eldeflower heads are left intact and strained later, but for wine the flowers need to be removed from their stems or the wine will be bitter.

The elderflower wine recipe is a little more complicated (recipes are easily available online) but the ingredients are the same as for cordial - flowers, lemon, sugar and water!

Wild roses are also in bloom on hedgerows everywhere. This is our wild rose bush that we brought with us from Kerry in 1996 and now happily resides beside the fuschia hedge in our front garden.

I love wild roses. Ours are pink, but they also are abundant in white. The pink petals are preferable for a cordial just because the end product looks nice!

To make the cordial, you need about 2 generous handfuls of petals with bitter white "claws" removed, juice of 1 lemon, 500 ml water and 300 g sugar. Simmer water, petals and lemon juice for 15 mins. Strain and return liquid to pot; add sugar to the rose water and heat till sugar has dissolved. Simmer 5 mins before filling sterilised bottles or jars.

Add sparkling water to the cordial for a soft drink, or add prosecco for a sparkly adult drink. Better yet, make rose petal martinis and enjoy the great weather!

Xmas preparations begin!

I have been very busy this past week or so! I started the new triptych (next post?) but I have also been busy preparing for xmas and other events coming soon.

I did a large batch of apricot-pineapple jam with almonds. I have been making this jam for xmas presents since 1983, I think. Actually, I only started adding in the almonds for excitement about 15 years ago. I have to source more paraffin though, as I used the last I had on these non-mason jars. I will make up the cranberry-clementine with brazil nut jam when I can get hold of cranberries.

I also made some puddings, a few people get them as gifts too.

Another event is coming up, so I have set out to make another gift book. This is a picture of all the prepared pieces; I started sewing the signatures to the leather cover last night, so expect to be finished that before the weekend is out.