Our Xmas Dinner!

This year’s Xmas is very different for us as we are all celebrating within our own family units and not joining our extended families as our area went into Tier 4. So, this means that we can’t join any other households and can only have our support bubbles. Normally, for our Xmas celebrations, we would go to my husband’s family house for dinner on Xmas eve. Then, on the Xmas day, we would all go over there in the morning for a nice fry up breakfast and the kids would sort out all the presents into piles for everyone! Come evening time, we would head towards my brother in law’s house for dinner! It was so strange to celebrate by ourselves as we always had a large gathering.

So, we kept the tradition, I cooked some sausages and eggs in the morning and in the afternoon, i was prepping for our Xmas dinner. My brother in law was joining us for dinner and as mentioned previously, he is a vegetarian! I didn’t want to buy a meal for him as i wanted to make something special for him. I did have a look at the vegetarian festive dinners and alot of recipes involved pastry which is not my strongest point of cooking!

After a couple of days looking online, decided to make a nut roast for him, I found the recipe online – Felicity Cloake which seemed quite simple to follow. Gosh, i am shocked at the amount of chopping you need to do! It took me and my mum over an hour trying to prep the nut roast!! Whereas, our dinner was a roast beef joint from Jamie Oliver’s recipe, where you just chuck everything in the oven dish and put the meat on top and leave it to cook in the oven for just over an hour! I think in hindsight, next time, if i had to do a nut roast again, i would prep the day before as i didn’t realize so much chopping was involved and also the different stages for the ingredients!!

Our dinner turned out perfect! The beef was cooked beautifully and just right – medium to well! I am so glad the nut roast held it shape when it was turned out from the loaf tin, i was feeling so anxious about it incase it ended like a pile of vegetables and not cooked!! Everybody loved it!!

For dessert, i made a baked Oreo cheesecake! I normally make a chilled Oreo cheesecake and seeing i haven’t made a baked version in years, I thought it would be nice to do a baked one!! It was so yummy, creamy and rich, i will write up the post later on!

I hope you had a nice Xmas celebration! Hopefully, next year, we can all go back to celebrating with our families and friends and a have a big festive feast!! 🙂

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Xmas Gingerbread Men!

I feel it’s not Xmas unless you make a batch of gingerbread men biscuits! Normally, before the boys break up for their school’s holidays, I would normally make a batch of festive biscuits and give it out to the kids in their class. Unfortunately, with all that is happening with COVID-19, we can’t bring any treats for the kids now. So, at the end of their school day last week, I just gave out chocolate to the kids as a little treat.

I love the smell gingerbread men from the oven, it makes the home feel like Xmas! The boys measured all the ingredients, rolled out the dough and we used Xmas cutters! As the kitchen was quite warm, when the biscuits were baking, they were huge as the dough spread out!

We asked Alexa to put some Xmas pop music on and we decorated the biscuits on our dining table!! The boys were already munching them before the icing set! 🙂 Enjoy and I hope you do some Xmas baking too! 🙂

Wishing everyone a Happy Merry Xmas! 🙂

I always use this recipe from the BBC Food website and I just added 1xtsp of vanilla extract. Ingredients:

350g/12oz plain flour, plus extra for rolling out
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
125g/4½oz soft butter
175g/6oz light soft brown sugar
1 egg
4 tbsp golden syrup & 1 tsp of Vanilla Extract

Method

1) Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger and cinnamon and pour into the bowl of a food processor. Add the butter and blend until the mix looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar.

2) Lightly beat the egg and golden syrup together and vanilla extract, add to the food processor and pulse until the mixture clumps together. Tip the dough out, knead briefly until smooth, wrap in cling film and leave to chill in the fridge for 30 minutes or atleast until it feels firm and not soft.

3) Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper.

4) Roll the dough out to a 0.5cm/¼in thickness on a lightly floured surface. Using cutters, cut out the gingerbread men shapes and place on the baking tray, leaving a gap between them.

5) Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until lightly golden-brown. Leave on the tray for 10 minutes and then move to a wire rack to finish cooling. When cooled decorate with the writing icing and cake decorations, if using.

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My Favourite Breakfast

I discovered ‘Overnight Oats’ a couple of years ago and it is my favourite breakfast!! So quick and easy to make and once you have got the basic ingredients, you can choose what you like to go in it and your choice of toppings!

I just use my half a cup measurer and a table spoon to measure out all the ingredients!

Ingredients – Half a cup of oats, 2-3 x tbsp chia seeds, 3-4 x tbsp of coconut Greek yoghurt (you can use any yoghurt, greek is best if you want it to be creamy), half cup of almond milk and a squeeze of honey. Just mix it altogether and cover and leave in the fridge to set.

For the toppings, I like to add freshly cut fruits like strawberries and blueberries. Also, you can add a handful of mixed seeds or granola for a cruchy taste!!

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