Photo Friday

and that's all folks! We're off for our traditional Christmas break (is two years traditional?), where we can relax and enjoy time with family and friends without the pressures of writing blog posts. We'll be back in January, but until then

Merry Christmas

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Kitchen Gadget 11. Non-stick Sheets

A long time ago, back when this Kitchen Gadgets series was in its infancy, we talked about pizza. We mentioned in passing that we use non-stick sheets to stop our pizza sticking to its baking tray. It might have been a fleeting reference but the truth is that we have a growing collection of these sheets and we love them. We use them nigh on constantly.

You might then ask why it has taken us so long to give them a post of their own. The truth is that we use them in so many small little ways that it's been hard to think of a recipe to give you that highlights just how useful they are.

You see we baked biscuits on them and popped one in our roasting tin for sweet buns. We've used them for breadsticks and for collecting fresh pasta. The more I looked them more I saw them lurking in the background of bake after bake, blog post after blog post, they are the unsung heroes in our kitchen.

So, here's just one more recipe that we use a non-stick sheet for: Stollen.

Stollen
This is Joe's modified version of Delia's stollen recipe. We use our bread machine to make the dough and then plait the stollen and marzipan into three strands as this disperses the marzipan throughout the stollen - not just in the middle. Unorthodox, but tasty!

7g Dried Yeast
350g Strong White Bread Flour
50g Caster Sugar
1/4tsp Salt
110g Butter
1 Egg
150ml Milk
Zest of 1/2 Lemon

200g Dried Fruit and Nuts, approximately (use what you have around):
 - 100g Sultanas
 - 25g Glace Cherries
 - 25g Mixed Peel
 - 25g Apricots
 - 25g Flaked Almonds

200g Marzipan


1. Put all the ingredients, minus the fruit/nuts and the marzipan, in a bread machine on a dough cycle. Once finished mix in the fruit/nuts.

2. Split the dough into three equal pieces and then roll these into three sausages of equal length and thicknesses.

3. Flatten the sausages and tweak if needed to make them the same.

4. Roll out lengths of marzipan approximately a fingers width in diameter and lay them along your dough stopping 5cm short of each end.

5. Wrap each length of dough around the marzipan to re-form them into sausages.

6. Plait the three strands taking care not to stretch the dough as you do so (it will want to stretch!). Once you've finished plaiting tuck the ends of the plait under and transfer to baking sheet lined with a non-stick sheet.

Ours turned out to be a little long for the tray...

7. Leave to rise again (until doubled in size if you can be that patient).

8. Bake at 170C fan for around 30mins or until the top is golden and the bread sounds cooked (hollow when tapped - normal bread making rules apply).

9. Transfer the stollen on its non-stick sheet to a wire rack and allow to cool.

10. Once cool turn over and the sheet should just peel away.

11. Enjoy with a cup of tea!

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January in the Chicken Coop

This month our hens have been....

... laying eggs! Well, Pepper has anyway. As with last year she's been the first to end the winter break and is laying most days. We were very impressed that she started again within a week of last winters date, and that gives us great hope that Frog and Lemon might not be too far behind. 

... continuing the festive season. We've been filling the nest box with shredded wrapping paper (avoiding the shiniest stuff) which has been making things bright and colourful.

... enjoying weekends in the garden. While the weeks are spent wallowing in the muddy run, at the weekend we let them out into the garden still where they have a good rummage in the compost heap and scratch through the lawn. We took a sunny Sunday afternoon to get some jobs done in the garden recently and I was reminded of how pleasant pottering can be with the hens wandering around to keep you company.

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Photo Friday - 100

Thanks google for auto animating!

This is our 100th post *does a little dance*. Its been a great eight months and we've loved how much the blog has grown in that time. Coincidentally, we also hit our 10,000 pageviews milestone (according to blogger) this week: that's 10,000 times you lovely people have come to look at our blog and for that we're exceedingly grateful. 100 posts with no visitors would be very dull indeed.

Geek alert: How satisfying is that?!

We're now going to take a break over Christmas, relax and unwind, and we'll be back with our 101st post in the new year.

Merry Christmas!

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2013 Christmas Cards

As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago one of our Christmas traditions is to make our own Christmas cards. I enjoy card making all year round, but when it comes to making Christmas cards it becomes a joint effort because some very different skills are needed. While I might happily put an hour or two into making an individual card, we don't have the luxury of that sort of time when we're making several dozen in a short space of time and so it all becomes about engineering a design that can be reproduced in a few minutes. All the emphasis goes into producing that first card, so that the rest can flow off the production line.

This year we came across a fabric shop in Chester when we were there in October. Spotting their selection of Christmas material got us thinking and we quickly decided to make Christmas tree cards using three triangles from different fabrics. Simple.

Do you have any idea how much time it can take to settle on the size and shape of three triangles? We tried to do it by eye, with mathematics and got through a lot of sticky-notes. There may have been a few rude words exchanged. We tried triangles of equal size (definitely no), equal shape with decreasing size (didn't quite look right), equilateral triangles, isosceles triangles, nothing quite ticked all the boxes. The breakthrough came when we realised that we needed three completely different triangles. The top triangle needed to be pointier than the base triangle and setting the middle triangle half way between the two finally solved the quandary and we were finally on our way.

Design now sorted, here's a guide to making your own Christmas tree cards:

1. Make cardboard templates of your three triangles to the below measurements.

2. Use these templates to cut out equal quantities of big, medium and small triangles. They should tessellate nicely allowing good use of the material.

3. Make another template that is the size of your base card and has your final tree shape cut out of it - this is all about speed!

(Optional: We printed a short letter into the inside of our card before assembly. If you decide to do this you'll need to make sure that the line of stitches we'll be adding later won't interfere with your text. )

4. Set up your sewing machine with a shiny thread and do some tension checks - metallic thread can be a pain!

5. Position your card, with the template and three triangles under your machine and carefully sew a line of stitching through the middle of each triangle, and overshoot at the bottom to make the trunk of the tree.

6. Release the card and the template from your machine and tuck the ends of the threads through to the back of the card. Trim the threads and secure with a little bit of tape if needed.

7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until all your cards are made.

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A Special Christmas Tree

Last weekend we were staying with our friend Chloe, and she had a very special plan for our time. Last Christmas they had made a tree with a difference and now it needed "one-upping". Since this year her husband was away with work Joe and I stepped in to help with the creativity - something we were very happy to do as I'm sure you'd have guessed. We decided to try and make a bauble tree like this one.

The first stages of this turned out to be very fiddly. Attaching small hooks to each of the baubles turned out to be tricky enough, but cutting lengths of fishing line and using the crimp beads to form a loop at either end (while making sure it was the right length of course) took a lot of concentration. It didn't help that the crimp beads weren't gripping the line very well so we ended up doubling it up to provide a bit more friction. It took the three of us several hours to get all the baubles on strings!

As we completed each piece of line we connected it to a bauble and hung it from Chloe's airer to try and maintain some sense of order. They were all desperate to get tangled, but we were very firm that this was not what we wanted!

After using more of the fishing line to suspend a rack from a couple of picture hooks it was time to start assembling the tree. We'd followed the lengths of line from our model blogpost and so just gradually worked our way through them while trying to get the right balance and positioning.

Finally, we added an angel.... Because all trees need something to top them off.

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Origami Advent Calendar

I know I'm running a little late in the year for advent calendar explanations as we're already a week into December, but I'm going to do so anyway. We've had a variety of advent calendars over the last few years, some shop bought, others hand made. Last year I made this one, and as it's stood the test of being in the back of the cupboard for eleven months it is getting a second outing.

When I say origami, its actually a fake! As nice as it would be to make these properly, I chose to use paper that was far to thick to bend nicely, and I wanted this to hold its shape through whatever battering it might get! For both these reasons I decided to glue the envelopes together rather than just fold them into position.

To make your own (maybe for next year?!):

1. Cut out 24 squares of paper of different colours and sizes. Mine were 7.5cm, 10cm, 12cm and 18cm - but if I were to do this again I wouldn't go smaller that 10cm. The 7.5cm ones are a little too small.

2. With each square in turn, fold along the diagonal, then take one of the points and fold it back on itself. Open this last fold out again.

3. Fold in the two side points to the line you've just made. Glue these into position.

4. Number the envelopes 1-24. I tried to keep this as random as possible.

5. Trim one of the two points, and punch a hole in the other.

6. Thread all the envelopes onto a ribbon - the thickness of the ribbon and the size of the hole meant mine held through friction (pure luck, let me assure you), you might find you need to tie knots to get yours to hold.

7. Fill with your advent treats of choice and hang somewhere in your home.

Hiding in too dark a corner to capture a 

proper photo of - sorry!

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Sunshine and Christmas Traditions

A few weeks ago I was honoured to receive the sunshine award from Jo. As part of the award she wanted to know all about our Christmas traditions and that sounded like a great idea, so we decided to tell you all about ours - and ask you all about yours!

Still being relatively early in our married life we're still making up what Christmas looks like as we go along. Some things we like and repeat, others we decide were better as one off's. Traditions are being started left right and centre - and a few are being continued from our childhoods.

We've spent every Christmas together so far with different people in different places. No two have yet been alike - and that's just the way we like it. We've spent them alone, with friends and with family. Sometimes we've been at our house - sometimes we've visited others.

So when we're at ours, what do we always do?

We often have a real tree. A big one. This started the year we went to our local Homebase where they were all pre-wrapped. With no other way of choosing we went for the one that had the most bulk for its height and then spent the rest of Christmas trying to dodge it as it took over the whole living room. There's something special about the way pine needles get everywhere and can be found for months that we wouldn't miss.

We go to Church. As members of our local baptist church we love getting stuck into the Christmas services. Nativities and carols, contemplation's and celebrations - we'll be at the lot.

We always open our presents slowly. This one comes from both our families. There is definitely no free-for-all with what is under the tree - the presents are made to last as much of the day as possible. Everyone watches everyone else open their gifts and we all take it in turns. Neither of us can imagine this any other way, and so this is one tradition that has definitely stuck.

We start Christmas day with bagels, smoked salmon and cream cheese. This one I think is quite a unique tradition. It was a favourite of ours at a Bristol tea shop and we fancied recreating it at home as something special for our first Christmas together. It worked so well that it's become a fixture.

We spend quality time with family. Regardless of where we are for the main event we make sure that we get a few good days with each of our families over the holidays. Plenty of time for films, games and brisk winter walks.

We listen to the same Christmas music. The first of December comes around and out comes the Christmas music. This is always a complete mix of traditional carols and cheesy classics. Our favourite though, that is played to death for the whole month, is the Christmas album from Straight No Chaser; amazing versions of Christmas favourites - all a cappella. We would definitely recommend it.

We try and make our own cards. We set up a production line and get cracking on these. Its a very different skill to those we make for birthdays throughout the year and often takes some careful though and normally a template or two.

We mix and match our Christmas dinner. We take this very much as it comes. Last year we boned a chicken, and then rolled it up with as much stuffing as it could take. It was very tasty and this year we're thinking of doing the same again - but maybe with a turkey as there will be more of us! One year we had lamb and on another we had a traditional turkey - bones included.

And now we're feeling really nosy and would love to hear all about your Christmas traditions. What do you do? Where do you go? Who do you spend it with? What do you eat? We want to know it all!

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Honey Glazed Gammon

There is something warming about a roast gammon joint that makes it ideal for a special occasion in winter. Roast gammon needs little more introduction! This post has been scheduled for some time on joe-in-the-kitchen.blogspot.com but as that is now mothballed I felt it should be pulled to here. Sorry for the white balance on some of the photos - my photography has improved significantly in the past year!

Just a quick warning - this recipe needs to marinate for 24 hours.

Ingredients:

• 1 medium gammon joint (approx 2kg)
• 1 1/2 tsp peppercorns
• 1 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp ginger
• 12 cloves
• 1 tsp cinnamon (or stick equivalent)
• 2 star anise
• 1/3 tsp allspice
• 1 tsp mace (or 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg)
• 3 tsp honey
• 2 tsp port

for the glaze:

• 3 tsp honey
• 1 tsp paprika
• some more cloves (mostly to decorate)

Crush all the spices coarsely and bring to a paste with the honey and port. Smear over the gammon and leave it in the fridge overnight to soak in the flavour.
Fit the joint in a tightly fitting pan and cover in the minimum amount of water possible (you don't want to wash the marinade back out). Simmer for about 25 minutes per 500g (or nearer 20 min / lb if you prefer) until the internal temperature is over 70 degrees Celsius (160 F). Rinse off the remains of the marinade with a small quantity of fresh boiling water. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius (430 F) Let the meat sit briefly and drain. At this stage you will have a warm lump of slightly grey meat. Not hugely appetising but it will improve, honest! Remove any string / net and score through the fat. Move the meat into a roasting tin and glaze it with the honey and paprika before studding it with the cloves. Roast for about 20 minutes until the fat has a golden glaze. Leave to rest before carving.

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The Paperwhite Experiment Part 1: A Cunning Plan?

Last year we had some paperwhites (white narcissus) in bloom for Christmas. I was a little upset to discover that the general wisdom seems to be that the best thing to do with the bulbs, once they have finished flowering, is to bin them! This upset me so I planted the bulbs in a quiet shady corner of the garden once the frosts had passed thinking I would try and convince them to come back to life this winter.

Having done a bit of reading I decided to try and force them through an artificial dormant period in the hope of tricking them. Once the foliage died back (some time around July) I lifted the bulbs and set them to dry in a cool place. At the start of September I tucked the bulbs in the back of the fridge to attempt to simulate a bit of winter. This weekend (start of November) I have pulled them out and planted them again.

It is typical to plant paperwhites in an almost exclusively grit based compost but I have given mine a gritty compost mix - hopefully giving them enough nutrients to develop the bulbs again for next year. I shall keep you posted on what happens! Has anyone else tried forcing bulbs a second time and have any thoughts?

Gritty Compost

Broken crocks in the bottom to help with drainage

Fresh out the fridge

Ready for watering and sitting on a window still

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