I finished these during the week. I don't usually have much time during the week to sew at night time. I usually sew or knit on weekend nights, but recently the children have been practicing for piano exams and piano concerts and as the piano is in the same room as the embroidery, I've been providing them with an audience and getting a bit of extra sewing in.
These guys are done. Done and done. I'm rather pleased with the progress on them. Only because it took my three years to finish the first two Santas in the kit! So, taking one year to do these guys looks like a speed record for me.
I have two more Santas in the kit but I wont start on them until next year. I've got lots of other Christmas stuff to consume me in the next few weeks.
How are your Christmas preparations going? My house is starting to fill up with the Christmas boxes. I get my husband to bring up from the garage, about four boxes in October which are full of Christmas crafts. Then another four boxes with decorations and stuff come up in November and the final set of boxes come up in early December. I make it sound systematic...it isn't really like that every year. Some years, things flow smoothly, others it's a mad frenzy at the end.
It is fete season in Canberra. Spring and autumn are the big seasons for schools, preschools, local charities and churches to run fetes. We love them. There are always bargains to check out at the plant stalls, cake stalls, craft stalls, second hand books. Lots of them run really good international food stalls and some are still working in the spirit of the olden times, and offer the children some great activities. Some have lost that joyous part of a fete and are just about shopping....Anyway, on the weekend we went to the Miles Franklin School fete and the Orana school fete (and we don't attend either of those schools and both are outside our local area ...they are just really good).
The reason I introduce this post with a story about fetes is that I always go to the cake stall and try and buy a cake or plate of slices, biscuits that kind of thing. I've even been known to purchase multiple items at the cake stalls. So, get to the point Melissa! I would not buy this cake at a cake stall and yet, I'd be missing out on a piece of heaven.
My cake has an alarming dip in the middle of it. What's going on there? I wonder if it's because I overfilled the pan? And it's really hard for a drab, brown, un-iced cake to compete with the glamourous girls of chocolate icing, sprinkles, cream cheese icing, banana cakes, marble cakes, chocolate cakes with chocolate icing, vanilla cakes with chocolate icing. You get the picture. When you are standing at the cake stall, winsomely choosing your selection, little Miss English Gingerbread Cake is probably not going to catch your eye.
What's not to love about this cake though? I think the ratio is about half sugar/half other ingredients. And that sugar comes in the form of Golden Syrup. Yes. Golden Syrup. 425g of it. I thought at first it was a typo. Don't panic though. Press on and include it and you will be rewarded with a cake that has a remarkably balanced set of flavours. The sweetness of the sugar is balanced with the spicy tang of the other ingredients. It makes up into a beautiful caramelised, treacly, moist cake. The other flavours are the ginger, cinnamon and citrus tang. The cake includes orange marmalade in the batter and then lemon syrup drizzled over it on completion.
I might not buy this at a school fete...but....that would be my loss entirely.
This cheesecake came highly recommended (just check out the comments from my post on the Golden Lemon Almond cake). They were right! This is a delicious cheesecake. Having said that, we are fans of cheesecake and we do eat a fair bit of pumpkin (well at least the adults do). So you might be tempted to think we are easy to please on this front. Well....maybe...but I think objectively this is a really good cheesecake.
The crust is made from gingernut biscuits and toasted pecans, so that adds a lovely flavour. The pumpkin is lightly mixed with cream, cream cheese, eggs and raw sugar, which gives it a golden look and a soft, rich, caramel pumpkin taste. The topping is a deeply amber-coloured caramel - all runny and sweet and gooey. It just all works so well together. Ginger, pecans, creamy soft pumpkin and sweet caramel.
It seems that early on in my brief time in the bake-along, we made some tricky cakes with lots of stages. Well, this one only has three stages and only uses the food processor (not every bowl and appliance in the kitchen). So, on my scale of easy-to-hard, I'd rate it down at the easy end. "Make me again, again" - it is calling to me. We gobbled this down for breakfast, lunch, and afternoon tea.
During this week of pumpkin cheesecake baking we nearly finished our renovation. We recently had our whole house recarpetted, which involved packing everything and moving it out to the garage. Now that is over, we have unpacked all the essential furniture and possessions (first priority: beds, second priority:computers), all that remains is putting back all the books, glassware, bits and pieces, nick nacks and then call it a day. No more renovations for 2011. We still need to paint a few rooms and fix up a few things, but that's pretty much it.
If I get around to it, I'll show you my before and after shots of the kitchen and new deck.
At times, I've felt it was a madness to join a bake-along while renovating a house/kitchen but you know, I've really loved it and at times it helped keep me sane. I have loved focusing on something creative and delicious and sharing it with my family, friends and with you all. I have loved being part of something across the world, but shared. I've loved all the baking skills I've developed and (sheepish) I've acquired a number of fantastic new cake pans (gotta love that!). Certainly there were weeks where I struggled to participate and once I baked but forgot to photograph and then knittybaker told me that I didn't need tons of photos or even any photo..just let us know you've baked. Thanks for easing me in, Knittybaker. It's been a great experience. Thanks also you fellow bakers and readers (and my family who have tried all and loved most of what I do).
We finish up in a few weeks. Only three more cakes to go.
I think I need one of those Christmas wreath pans....as a parting gift to myself maybe....santa baby...I don't need a condominium or diamonds...
My first child started school in 2003. At the end of the first year of school, I made the two Kindy teachers (they were both part-time and shared the week), some baked goods as presents. I remember it being a nervous-breakdown-making-event, in the last two days of the school year, to bake two lots of iced, pudding-shaped, sweet Christmas buns with custard inside them. Both teachers seemed to really love them but I remember thinking, next year we need to make something well in advance of the pressures of the end of the school year. Not to mention the general craziness that Christmas brings.
I'm not sure how I stumbled on these things. I blame ebay. Anyway, ever since 2004 we've been making the teachers a beaded Christmas ornament. The good things about these kits is that they make at least two, sometimes three ornaments. So we give the teacher one (or two) and then keep the other one as a memento of that teacher. Each year we hang the teacher decorations on the tree and remember them. Some teachers we loved, others...well... they still got decorations and I try and say a little "hope they are doing better this year" wish (ie hope they aren't still shouting at lots of little children). Across both my children's primary school years and counting all the helpers in preschool, we've had 15 teachers so far and only 2 of them get the little "wish they are better now" treatment - so really, we have been lucky. And of course, some teachers we have really, really loved.
When my son moved to high school we stopped making the ornaments for his teachers. It seemed odd and inappropriate. Instead he bought gifts for the teachers he liked and we just quietly parted ways with the ones we didn't respect.
This year, like last year, it is just Tess and me and she has decided that she'll make the bells for the Guide leaders and the Plaid ornament for the wonderful Grade 4 teacher.
The other good thing about these kits is the children have always helped. Often I've needed to finish the ornament but the children have always started out with me.
2008: Grade 1 teacher
2007: Nick's Grade 4 Teacher
2006: Tessy's Preschool teachers (thankfully there were 4 birds in this kit)
Despite family conversations to the contrary, I'm pretty sure it was my turn to pick the free choice cake. Good to have a blog so that I can prove that on previous free choice weeks Nick picked the Chocolate Genoise with Peanut Butter Ganache, Tess picked the White Velvet Butter Cupcakes (in rose form), and Tim's choice was the Apple-Cinnamon Crumb Coffee Cake. All of which are now on the 'make again' list. So, could I live up to the standard set by the family and pick another successful cake? It's a tough gig. But yes...4 for 4. We all loved this cake. It's a keeper.
It has a sour cream base and is mixed with lemon zest and almond and then after baking, a lemon syrup is poured over the cake. It is moist and light at the same time. It has a lovely balance of tangy and sweet. And I love the shape of this cake (sheepishly confesses to another new cake pan).
I'm not sure if I captured it in the photos, but like Rose, I managed to have little crystallized bits of sugar that haven't completely dissolved in the sugar syrup, so they sit on top of the cake, catching bits of light. Love that.
This photo doesn't quite do justice to the cake crumb. I think it looks a bit stodgy in the photo but in real life it is soft and delicate (but yet still moist). I love this cake. I think, in fact, it is my favourite so far. It's really nice for breakfast, with a cup of tea. Nick and I had it for breakfast two days in a row!
