#ShareAdvent Day 24: Family Traditions

I'm not necessarily one for lots of nostalgia, but there's something about Christmas, and there's something about Christmas food that throws that idea out of the window. Every family does it differently; every family has their own dishes they like to have on the table.

I love Christmas food à la family Frances - the chocolate coins in shoes on 6 December and salami and plain crisps as a pre-Christmas-lunch snack  (both instigated from my father's German side and the latter carried on today as it's just too delicious a combination); the smell of homemade mince pies even though I won't eat them, and homemade cheese straws and sausage rolls, both of which I will eat plenty of.

The one dish I have never come across anywhere else, though, is Noel Cakes. Christmas Eve as a child was often spent in the kitchen, rolling red marzipan into vague berry shapes while my mother cut out holly leaves from green marzipan and 'Nine Lessons and Carols' played on the radio. I never realised other people don't have these cakes until one year at junior school when a class discussion on Christmas food resulted in a teacher telling me that she'd never heard of them and they couldn't be real. I was very confused - I'd eaten a LOT of these to date so they had to exist.

So, to put an end to that madness, here are Noel Cakes:


NOEL CAKES (makes approx 24)

Ingredients

• 4 oz butter
• 4 oz caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 6 oz plain flour
• 4 oz ground almonds
• 1 tsp baking powder
• milk as necessary

Method

1. Preheat oven to around Gas Mark 4/ 180 C/ 350 F.
2. Cream together butter and sugar until light and creamy.
3. Beat in the egg a little at a time.
4. Add the flour, ground almonds and baking powder.
5. Add milk a little at a time until a 'dropping consistency' is obtained. The mixture should fall off the spoon fairly easily but not be runny.
6.  Pour the mixture into muffin tins, half filling each cup.
7. Bake for approx 10-15 minutes until the tops are slightly springy to the touch. Because of the ground almonds, the cakes don't really change colour or rise.
8. Leave to cool on a cooling rack.

Ice with white glace icing (sieved icing sugar mixed with a little water for a thickish paste) and leave to set a little before adding coloured marzipan or sugarpaste holly leaves and berries.

Any spare undecorated cakes can be decorated with blue icing and a yellow marzipan/sugarpaste star for 6 January - voilà, Epiphany Cakes.

What I Did On My Holidays

For several reasons, we did not go on holiday this summer. Firstly, I was on secondment in our Paris office until the beginning of March – it turns out that 6 months' worth of Eurostar tickets is not particularly cheap. Secondly, as you'll know if you are reading this, we are getting married next year – again, not cheap. However, we also needed the time elsewhere. Weddings not only do not pay for themselves; they also don't plan themselves.

I will, at some point in the not-too-dim-and-distant future, be writing a post for the fabulous Any Other Woman's A-Z of Weddings on the subject of how to plan a wedding when you feel like you have no time day-to-day to do so. This post is therefore just a little place to say that although we haven't been exploring the exotic beaches of Ecuador, or toasting ourselves in the trattorias of Tuscany, we have had a lot of fun - having a wonderful summer really doesn't have to involve going to the airport or ferry terminal.

In May, we went for a cookery weekend at the wonderful Ashburton Cookery School in Devon:

In August, we went to the Olympics (four times) and were glued to the tv whenever we weren't sunning ourselves in the garden. Synchronised Swimming? Dressage? Beach volleyball? We're experts:

We cooked:

And baked and bought ourselves a beautiful shiny KitchenAid mixer:

Lemon drizzle cake

Orange drizzle cake with chocolate buttercream

Never thought I would be in love with a piece of machinery - but look how pretty!

We went to weddings of friends and family and made each one into a lovely weekend away - we went punting, ceilidh dancing and each has been a valuable chance to catch up with people we don't see often. Looking forward to the next wedding on 8 September.

And finally, we planned our own wedding. But that's for another post.

Olympic Cooking

The Olympics are here! It's fair to say that so far this weekend I have been glued to the TV and have quickly become an 'expert' on road cycling, handball, gymnastics and weightlifting, amongst others. We're off to the dressage on Friday, and two synchronised swimming sessions next week (no prizes for guessing who suggested which tickets we apply for...), and I am very excited! I keep forgetting that in reality tomorrow is just another day at work and I can't spend the day flitting between different sports. Bah. Still, we have some time off next week (wedding planning/Olympic watching mission) so just the four days to get through.

Anyway, here's some cake to cheer us all up as we head into another Monday.

And, randomly, some onion bhajis. From sticky mess...

...to crispy oniony goodness.

The Weekend That Was: Home Cooking Come Rain or Shine

After 7 months of frustration, dreaming and asking ourselves a lot of questions, we think we have finally decided to take our house off the market. Oddly enough, this decision comes a few weeks after another couple made an offer. Sadly, it started off as an offer far far below the asking price - and has only just started to improve.

The fact is that because the offer has only just increased to what was our very bottom line, this has forced us to ask questions about whether now is actually the right time to move, where we would move to and how this would affect our lives in the near future.

There are several reasons why we wanted to move house - although it's ideal for a commute into the City, which is why Alan bought it (well before I turned up), I work in Canary Wharf and it takes me easily 80 minutes to get into work. I work long and sometimes unpredictable hours, and it can be tough sometimes getting home about half an hour before I want to go to bed (yes, yes, I know if I lived round the corner from the office this might still be the case, but at the moment I do this regularly)!

Secondly, our house is not walking distance from the station, and the bus service inexplicably finishes at 7pm and is non-existent on Sundays. I don't drive (a sad accident involving a driving test, failure, and moving to a city as a student where car use was far from necessary), and even if I did, the idea of driving separately to the station every morning seems ridiculous. So at the moment I find myself dependent on Alan being willing to pick me up from the station, or having to get a taxi, if I have a day or evening out without him. Fine for the short term (so he says!), but certainly not ideal for the long term.

Thirdly, the house is lovely but it isn't a family house. It isn't where we envisage setting up our family, and although that won't be for a while, it's certainly at the back of our minds.

But then against that are other issues we had to think about, and which seemed so clear when we first put the house on the market. I will find out in December whether I will be staying at my current firm, and although I love my job and want to stay there, I may not have a choice. This then has an onward impact on where we live - an easy commute to the City is not the same as an easy commute to Canary Wharf, and the former gives us far more options that we would be silly not to consider.

Secondly, we have booked our wedding on the basis of where we live now, and we are now keen to stay close to this area where possible.

We debated renting, but this is also not ideal. Reading Esme's recent post on Any Other Woman, and recalling the time my friend and I came home one day to a notice to quit from our landlord simply because he wanted to move back in, I realise how lucky Alan and I are to have a house. We have space, we have a garden and although it's taken time for me, it suddenly feels like our home. We can decorate, we have security, and paying the mortgage is not money down the drain. Yes, we want to move, but renting just anywhere as quickly as possible no longer works for us.

The odd thing is, that if this other couple had made an initial offer that was somewhat nearer the mark, we might not have had this conversation, we might not have asked these questions of ourselves and we might have rushed into something that wasn't quite right for us - and although we are not necessarily looking for a house for life, it needs to stand up to at least five years of family Godfrey-Iwaschkin.

This weekend's cooking:

Fish pie

Butternut squash and chilli soup

Cardomom loaf (l); Chocolate and currant loaf (adapted from recipes by the Hummingbird Bakery)

A quick snooze in the brief Sunday afternoon sunshine!

A Little Taste Of Heaven

I'm probably quite hard to buy presents for. Outside of work I don't have any particular hobbies, and to be honest not much time to pursue them even if I did.

So you can imagine how impressed and pleased I was when Frances thought outside the box, and arranged a weekend cookery course with the Ashburton Cookery School down in Devon.

Not only was it a really relaxing weekend get-away in the beautiful Devon countryside; but I learned a huge amount, had so much fun and spent most of the time eating something wonderful!

The course was called "Express Dinner Party".

On the Saturday we made:

• Lunch:
• Pan-fried Duck Breast, with Cranberry Sauce

• Canapés:
• Tapenade Palmiers
• Marinated Pork, Courgette and Baby Corn Kebabs
• Butternut Squash Veloute
• Herb Breaded Mussels

Breaded Mussels, Pork Kebabs and Tapenade Palmiers

• Main Course:
• Salmon Parcel, stuffed with Anchovies, Olives & Sundried Tomatoes
• Desert:
• Chocolate Mousse, with Orange Segments in Cointreau and Chocolate decorations

Chocolate Mousse with Frances's Amazing Decorations!

Then on Sunday:

• To Start:
• Skate, in Black Butter, with Capers and Parsley

• Middle Course:
• Pan-Fried Scallops, Aubergine Cavier, Quail's Egg

Scallops & Quail's Egg (I broke my egg - sadness!)

• Main Course:
• Fillet Steak, Griddled Baby Vegetables, Wasabi Mash and Grain Mustard Sauce

Action Shot: Griddling Veg

• Dessert:
• Plum Clafoutis
• Tuile Biscuits 

Frances got the hang of these. I attempted a bunny - it didn't end well ...

And the best part of all?

Someone else did all of the washing up! Bliss.

Fin.

The Weekend That Was: Baking

What do you do when it hasn't stopped raining all week and isn't about to let up just because it's Saturday? Why, you make Earl Grey tea cupcakes with tea-scented buttercream.

This was also a weekend in which we made butternut squash soup, bagels and potato dauphinoise, and cooked..... zebra. Pan-fried, in case you too have some zebra steak and just don't know what to do with it.

Result? A weekend of food so awesomely delicious that it makes me sad not be able to carry on eating all week. Still, the threat of having to try on wedding dresses soon is keeping the reins on temptation for now...