A Look Back at the Christmas of 2017..... Pt 1

Gentle Friends, the next couple of posts are of our Christmas Holidays....

with quite a few snaperoos..... so here goes..........

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The Friday before Christmas found us at....

... our wonderful SF Flower Market.  We were having a few friends over for Christmas Lunch and so we had to get the house ready and what better way than with a load of flowers....

.... as usual, there was quite lot to choose from...

.... and lots of Christmas stuff was still available...  

these bay and pine garland were really lovely and smelled great!! 

 ... there was even lots of early tulips...

... these berry branches are super and I love them, but with the dogs, we never get any since they drop all over the place and I don't want to take the chance on a poisoning.... but I still really like them!!

... we had decided on red and white roses and this bunch was a nice starting off point for ideas....

.... there are lots of variations of color and tons of roses...

.... and all sorts of mixed bunches of flowers.... some worked... and some really didn't... 

 we usually buy just bunches of flowers and Rico creates the arrangements .... 

it's easier and we get what we really want !!

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This year I wanted to take Rico out to a Christmas Tea at Lovejoy's.... so I made a reservation and Saturday we headed over and it was very relaxing...  

.. the tea room was decorated for Christmas...

... one of the fun things about Lovejoys is the fun use of mix-matched china for all the tables...

... there are lots of choices for eats with tea, we got two"Queens Tea's"...

... with each "Tea", you get a pot of tea... I got a lovely Citrus based tea that was full of spice and peel, it tasted like Christmas in a cup, delicious!!  Rico got the lavender and vanilla, another delicious black flavored tea...

.. with our Queens Teas we got a couple of little sausage rolls...

... the food is served on tiered trays...

... with each Queen's tea you get a choice of two tea sandwiches, I chose pear/stilton and smoked salmon/cream cheese, Rico chose the special salad sandwich and chicken walnut salad... you also get warm crumpets, scones, green salad and caraway cole slaw....  after a long leisurely tea we headed home and I got started on the preliminary cooking  I needed to get done for Christmas .....

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With friends coming around and with two cakes to bake I got started.... 

one of the snacks I wanted to make was some sugared peanuts.... easy and tasty

...  it's a two-part process, stir raw peanuts, water, and sugar then....

when all the water is evaporated you roasted them stirring occasionally until dry and crunchy.

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There were two cakes I needed to make, one for the coffee hour after Midnight Mass and the second one a Birthday cake for Baby Jesus.  I've talked about the Birthday cake before in other Christmas posts there has been a birthday cake every year since I can remember at my family's Christmas table.....I've made all kinds of cakes and this year the Birthday cake I chose to make was a Lane Cake.  

...so, I wanted to get started and make the fruit/nut filling for the cake.  

The cake I made for after Chrismas mass...

...was a glazed Rum cake...

....  along with the Sugared peanuts, I made up some Spicy Nuts and Bolts (Chex Mix).

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I think that will wrap up today's post.  Thanks for stopping by do stop again!!

Take care,

edgar

A Little More Christmas....

Gentle Friends, our Christmas started off with a visit to the Flower Market Christmas Eve morning so that Rico could pull together one of his table arrangments for Dinner on Christmas Day.... 

here's the result....

... I failed to get a better picture before dinner so here's the best shot I have.... made up of roses, lilies, nandina berries, pine, juniper, laurel leaves, and some super variegated cabbages, it was another tour-de-force al la Rico!!  and the table was all the better for it!!

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We attended Midnight Mass (at 10 pm) and it was a lovely, we got home around 11:30 pm and it was off to bed.... the next morning we had a sour cream coffee cake and some sausage pinwheels... we had some friends coming over for Christmas Dinner so I got moving on that meal mid morning.....

Here's the table before we sat down.....

...  to eat at around 4....  the menu was...

Baked ham

Dinner rolls

cranberry /dried cherry sauce

green beans with toasted almonds

mashed potatoes 

Melon Pickle

... and as the tradition in my family I had made a Birthday cake for baby Jesus...  this year it was...

... my take on a traditional Sugar Plum Cake with a cream cheese frosting, 

which we served with a nice champagne....

... the cake was deliciously moist if a bit crumbly, but everyone enjoyed it and was a total winner!!

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There you go sports fans, some highlights from our Christmas by the Bay. 

Thanks for stopping by do stop again!!

Take care,

edgar

Christmas Cake and Christmas Day.....

Gentle Friends, I've had this Post in the works for about a week now....  the Christmas Cake I've been working on was really lots of fun and I learned so much in the doing...  you remember I made my own marzipan to cover the cake, and I was determined to make my own fondant also.  

Once again I turned to the Internet and watched a few videos of others making fondant and decided to go with the non-egg white version... the one I made was marshmallow based and like the marzipan, was not hard to make it just took some time and the doing to get it done.

It is made from basic ingredients and was really sticky.....

... but after kneading and working it I ended up with a good sized lump of the stuff.  It needed to sit over night so I let it rest and on Christmas Eve I rolled it out, made my trees et voila - 

Christmas Cake......

...writing on cake is not my strong suit, the little decorations on the trees I bought, after I settled the trees in place I sprinkled a little icing sugar over it all for a a snowy effect...I was very pleased with how it turned out looking...

Christmas Eve we all were heading for 10:00 pm Mass and I really was not going to be in the mood to make a big dinner so Rico suggested we go to Noah's and do a Bagel bar....

... it couldn't have been easier and everyone enjoyed it.....  for Christmas Day Dinner we had some friends over and I was told to keep it simple, nothing fancy so I made a eye of round roast, mashed 'taters, biscuits and Rico whipped up some of his green beans.....again a tasty dinner without much fuss...

...and after dinner I cut everyone slices of cake and everyone politely ate a piece, it was a nice fruit cake...I think I liked the marzipan the best of the whole thing!!  I am glad I learned how to make it.

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Christmas afternoon was spent lying around the house......

.... Lolly and Wahumpa....

.... and Smokie with the Peach.....  It was a lovely laid back, no stress kind of day spent with family and friends, I couldn't have asked for a nicer present!!!

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I think that about wraps it up for Christmas this year, thanks for sopping by, do stop again!!

Take care,

edgar

Working on the Christmas Cake

Gentle Friends.....last night I started the last steps towards "Christmas Cake" for Christmas....  

I got the tin out....

 ...opened up and unwrapped the cake.......

...what I needed to do was get the marzipan layer on the cake a few days before the fondant so that it can "dry" out a bit.  To make the marzipan stick to the cake I needed to brush some apricot jam that had been melted over low heat....  I had about two tablespoons of apricot jam in the fridge....

 ... thank goodness I hadn't counted on what we had, and picked up some more on the way home...  that lid was sure tough to open up....

 ...now, everywhere I read about how to do this cake stated that I needed to strain the jam to get out the bits of apricot - that didn't sit well with me, so I hauled out the immersion blender and smoothed that jam right out....

 ... I had made a double batch of marzipan over the weekend,  I'll never buy it again, so easy and so tasty!!!

.... here's the cake after being prepped with a sticky layer of apricot jam....

... the marzipan was still on the sticky side so I needed to work some more icing sugar into the paste and rolled it out....

 ... and the cake covered with the marzipan, I dusted off the excess sugar and straightened up the top and sides and it now sits on the dining room table "drying."

... I'll make the fondant tomorrow and get the whole cake decorated Christmas eve....

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That's about does it for today sports fans, thanks for stopping by, do stop again!!

Take care,

edgar

Weekend Holiday Cookin'

Gentle friends, well, since it was "stir-up" Sunday , that's what I did, I stirred up my Christmas Cake.....  while I was creaming the butter and sugar - I prepared the spring-form pan...  double parchment layers on all sides, buttered and then two more layers tied around the outside....  this I think was that hardest part of the whole cake - tying that damn string - and it ain't pretty, but it held the parchment on!

... tied on a ready to go....... 

 ... the basic batter of butter, sugar, spice, eggs, flour, zest.....  all mixed together...

 ... alternately adding the nuts and "boozy" fruit by hand.....  the batter was getting really thick and hard to stir so I juiced the lemon and added the juice to the mix.......  I had read some recipes that called for juice others that didn't, but the addition of the juice made the stirring much easier...

 ....the batter was so very thick that it was basically a non-pouring batter .....  so.....  after "plopping" the batter into the pan and smoothing the top down it looked like this before going into the oven..... 

 ......  here is a snap after 3 1/2 hours and hot out of the oven ....  I tested it at 3 hour mark,  but it just wasn't there so I gave it another half hour and that did the trick.......

 ......  and here is the cake all cooled, I pulled the bottom paper off and wrapped the whole cake up in two layers of parchment and a double layer of foil and it now sits snuggle in a cake tin..... I had to let the cake sit out over night for it to get cold and I'll feed is a few teaspoons of rum tonight and then once a week until Christmas week.......  when I'll make my own marzipan to cover the cake - which has to dry a couple of days before decorating it with some home made fondant............

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..... I also got a start on Thanksgiving.....  I made my cranberry sauce and got my Onion/Jalapeno cornbread made and it will be good and stale by Thursday!!

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That's about it for today sports fans, thanks for stopping by do stop again!!!  I've had a couple of emails and questions about my Christmas Cake Recipe, and yes, I will post it - but at the moment it is just notes and and I need to transcribe it into recipe form - which I hope to get to this week.

Take care,

edgar

Christmas Cakin'

Gentle Friends, I started on the "Christmas Cake" last night - I got my scale out - and the dried fruit and chopped up everything that needed chopping, hauled out the liquor and......

... a big wooden spoon then stir, stir, stir.......  now, I'll stir this once a day, every evening until Sunday ..... when I'll mix up the cake and bake that sucker.   

After reading numerous CC recipes there seemed to be no real consensus about how long to soak the fruit, from a month to a quick boil up the day you bake it.  I think three days will be sufficient.  There was also no consensus regarding the types and amounts of fruit to use, so I went shopping with this statement in my head...  "If I won't put it in my mouth I won't put it in my cake."  So my fruit medley consists of four type of raisins (Black, Flame and Golden) and Currents (another raisin BTW), candied Pineapple, Cranberries, Dates and some Prunes....  I was going to also include some apricots, but they didn't look appetizing at either store I went to so they were left out.  I also wavered between Bourbon and Rum, finally going with Rum.

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That about wraps up the week, and now we're looking Thanksgiving square in the face.....  I've set my menu, and shopping list.  I'll start polishing silver and get a move on my cranberry sauce Sunday so it has time to "mature" before Thursday........  Have a super weekend and thanks for stopping by dos top again!!

Take care,.

edgar