I'm really looking forward to Christmas this year as it's the first year that our new house has been totally renovated. We have carpet in, the front room will be finished in time for Christmas which means we can have a Christmas tree for the first time in a couple of years and it really feels like home now.Woooo!

Christmas dinner the previous two years has been pretty basic because my kitchen lacked any kind of mod cons. We didn't even have a fridge freezer for the first few weeks in the new house until the new one was delivered and had our washer dryer in the garage running from an extension cable. We rushed to install the cooker and cooker hood and base units in the kitchen last year so we could make a traditional roast. You can see some snaps of what my house used to look like in this old post. As you can imagine I'm happy to have a normal home again and hope my family don't decide it would be a good idea to totally gut a house ever again!


Now that I've got a lovely kitchen and nice clean work surfaces I'm going to try and give everyone a handmade gift along with their main present this year. I did a trial run of the edible gifts last night and have shared the results.

Peppermint bark

1. Melt milk chocolate/dark chocolate and white chocolate in separate bowls in the microwave for a couple of minutes.
2. Pour the melted brown chocolate on a tray covered in non stick baking paper. Let it cool for an hour and then pour the white chocolate on top.
3. When the white chocolate becomes tacky, sprinkle pieces of crushed candy canes on top. Cool in the fridge over night and break into pieces the next day.

Gingerbread Men

350g/12oz plain flour, plus extra for rolling out

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

125g/4½oz butter

175g/6oz light soft brown sugar

1 free-range egg

4 tbsp golden syrup

cake decorations
writing icing

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, add to the food processor and pulse until the mixture clumps together. Tip the dough out, knead briefly until smooth, wrap in clingfilm and leave to chill in the fridge for 15 minutes.
3. Preheat the oven to 180C Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper.
4. Roll the dough out to a 0.5cm 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 12-15 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.

Jazzies

I also made my own festive 'jazzies' by melting chocolate, spooning circles of it onto greaseproof paper and then topping with sprinkles, simple!

I plan to bag up my edible gifts in celephane bags and tie with ribbon, both of which I buy on eBay.

This post featured simple edible gifts that anyone can rustle up but I'm hoping to do a few more posts on slightly more adventurous cakes and showstoppers. I'm not promising anything though because I once managed to overheat chocolate and make vile rocky road. There isn't even any baking involved in making that yet I still messed up...

Let me know if you try making any of these yourself.

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