Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

Christmas baking - love this time of year!

 Well, with Christmas less than one week away now, I have been to more Christmas functions than I can count, and have been busy in the kitchen with Christmas baking. My obsession with Christmas cookies has continued, and my most recent creations are reindeer shaped. I got the idea from a friend's photos on facebook, but used google images to refine it. So I can't claim the idea, but they were lots of fun to make. The gingerbread recipe is amazing! A friend gave it to me not so long ago, and it is the best gingerbread that I've ever had (disclaimer: I don't usually like gingerbread).

To make reindeer, I used a small gingerbread man cutter and used mini-pretzels, jaffas, and mini M&Ms as antlers, nose, and eyes respectively. The legs of the gingerbread man provide extra support for the pretzels/antlers.

You can obviously make any shape you want using the gingerbread as the base cookie. I like using gingerbread for the reindeer because of the colour of the cookie, I've never imagined reindeer to be white like a sugar cookie.


Gingerbread

3 Tbsp golden syrup
75g caster sugar
1 Tbsp water
1 tsp mixed spice
1 1/2 tsp ginger
75g butter
1/2 tsp baking soda
225g flour

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celcius.
2. Place golden syrup, sugar, water and spices in medium sized saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring well.
3. Remove from heat and add butter and baking soda. Mix well.
4. Add flour a bit at a time until a firm dough. Set aside to cool.
5. Once cool, cut out shapes and bake for approx 12 minutes until golden and crisp.

Enjoy the Christmas season!

H xo

Sugar Cookies

Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:
3 cups flour
250g butter
1 cup castor sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 tsp salt

1. Cream the butter and sugar together.
2. Add the egg and vanilla. Mix well.
3. Add in flour and salt. Mix well, the consistency should be that of pastry or similar.
4. Roll out and cut. Don't roll too thin.
5. Bake for 15 minutes at 160 degrees Celcius. Allow to cool completely on a wire rack before decorating.

To decorate, your imagination is your only limitation. I just used home made icing, tubes of ready-made icing for detail, hundreds and thousands, chocolate hail, coconut and coloured balls to decorate them, most of which was already in the cupboard.

Back Again!

Hi everyone,

First, let me apologise for not posting anything over the last three months. Everything happened at once, and I ran out of time to blog.

Since last writing, I have submitted my final project for my Masters degree and spent a month in India. India was such an incredible country to visit, and I look forward to sharing some of my experiences here, including my chance to go to high tea in the City Palace in Udaipur.

Christmas is also on its way, and I am currently obsessed with Christmas cookies. Check out the batch my sister and I made last night, the recipe is here. They were really quick and easy to make, and we had all of the ingredients in the pantry already. The only time consuming part is the decorating! I do a lot of baking at home, but a lot of it is for my family. I have been reminded how nice it is to bake and give it away, so plan on gifting quite a few Christmas cookies over the next couple of weeks.

Watch out for further posts for a Christmas themed high tea. Christmas always excites me because it means summer (in New Zealand) and holidays are on their way. It means time with family and friends, BBQs and the beach.

But for now I must run, it is a gorgeous summer's day here and I'm off to Christmas in the Park.

H xo

Nainoma Bars

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I’ve been baking a lot lately, the kitchen is my space to be creative, away from work, Uni and other stressors. I love finding a new recipe and trying it out. Especially ones that are a little bit different, like this one.

If I’m honest, I would say that the first thing that attracted me to this slice was the name of it. Nainoma Bars, where did that come from? The recipe tells me that the slice is also known as Continental Fudge, but I like Nainoma Bars much better. My Mum had a couple of recipes books out on the coffee table, and I was flicking through them and came across this slice. I’ve been a little obsessed with the chocolate-coconut combo lately, to the point where I’ve developed my own ‘Chocolate Rough’ muffin recipe. I’m still in the developing stages of this, but it is tasting pretty good. Anyway, this slice also had custard in it (another winner in my books) so I had to try it out.

This slice is quite sweet, so you only want a small piece at a time, but it went down a treat with my family. I cut my batch into 60 pieces, so there’s plenty to go round. Another thing I like about this recipe is that it involves no actually cooking time, which means that you can make it as you have time. I made the first two layers, had to go out for an hour, then came home and finished it off.

Nainoma Bars (aka Continental Fudge)

Base

115g butter

¼ cup sugar

3 Tbsp cocoa

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla essence

200g crushed malt biscuits (though I imagine wine biscuits would work too, throw them into the food processer to do this quickly)

Filling

55g butter

2 cups icing sugar

2 Tbsp custard powder

2 Tbsp hot water

Topping

150g dark chocolate (I used 62% cocoa)

1 Tbsp butter

1.     Line a shallow 30cm x 21cm tin with baking paper.

2.     For the base: Melt the butter and add sugar and cocoa, mixing together. Add the beaten egg, then the vanilla essence, crushed biscuits and coconut. Press into prepared tin and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

3.     For the filling: Cream softened butter with the sifted icing sugar, custard powder and hot water. Spread over the chilled base and return the refrigerator.

4.     For the topping: Melt and chocolate and butter in the microwave (30 second bursts at medium) and spread over the custard mixture.

5.     Refrigerate for another hour and cut into small squares. I recommend a hot knife to avoid cracking the chocolate topping. I cut mine into 60 squares, but you can make them bigger or smaller according to your own preferences. Store in the fridge.

Recipe taken from Ladies, A Plate: Traditional Home Baking by Alexa Johnston.

So if you have a bit of a sweet tooth I would recommend trying this one out.

Happy baking!

H xo

The Art of Food - Part 3

Several years ago I left the cold and rainy New Zealand winter for the hot and dry USA summer in Colorado. While I was there I had the privilege of meeting and staying with friends of my grandparents near Denver. Their son-in-law was an artist, who specialized in still life paintings. I loved his work straight away, and had to share some of his works in the third part of this series.

Scott Fraser lives and works in Longmont, Colorado. Check out his website here.

And here are a couple of my favourites…

Scott Fraser, Metropolis, 2003

Scott Fraser, Study in White VIII

Scott Fraser, Thread

Have a great weekend!

H xo

The Heritage Hotel

Date of Visit: 2 September 2012
Location: Heritage Hotel, 35 Hobson Street, Auckland
Website: http://www.heritagehotels.co.nz/auckland/restaurant-bar/
Cost: $32 pp

GrabOne strikes again, I went to High Tea at the Heritage Hotel for my Mum’s birthday with my family. Although the high tea was nice, the general consensus was that it was nothing spectacular.

Again, we made the reservation well in advance, and the initial day that we wanted was fully booked.

There was a large selection of teas on offer, all of which were from the Harney & Sons range. I had the Paris tea, which I really enjoyed. It was a black tea blend that had carmel, vanilla and black current flavours. Definitely a good tea selection. My sister opted for a hot chocolate but she wasn’t very impressed.

The table setting was clean and uncluttered.

The food selection was ok. I’ll start with what I liked. Chocolate dipped strawberries – always a winner. I also loved that all of the sandwiches were freshly made and they tasted great because of that. I wasn’t a huge fan of the sultana scones. To me, they tasted like sultana buns, they didn’t quite have the right texture for a scone.

The service was good and quick but not as attentive as I would have liked. It would have been great if the waiter serving the high tea had described what was being served for high tea as a menu was not provided. However, other than that, I don’t have any complaints.

What I did like about this high tea was the high ceiling of the restaurant, which was lit by natural light. Natural light is a lot softer than artificial lighting and makes the environment a lot lighter. Apparently the Heritage Hotel is what used to be the old Farmers building, and my parents spoke fondly of the place. I however, have no memory of its former occupants.

A brief review, but I feel like that basically sums up this high tea. It was ok, perhaps they are just offering high tea because it’s a current trend? For $32 I think it's a little expensive for what you get.

Service: 3.5/5
Food: 3/5
Tea: 4/5
Atmosphere/Ambiance:  3.5/5
Layout (of restaurant): 4/5
Setup (of table):  4/5

Overall: 3.5/5

The Art of Food - Part 2

It's the last day of winter today (in New Zealand at least) and I'm rather excited to see spring is on its way with the sunshine streaming through my window. This is part 2 of my look at artists who paint high tea related subjects and I've been enjoying getting to know some contemporary artists.

In my Google searches, I stumbled upon this artist and was instantly hooked. Joel Penkman appears to specialize in still life artworks. A New Zealander by birth, he now lives and paints in the UK. I particularly loved his paintings of tea cups, it reminded me of looking into my grandmother’s china cabinet when I was younger.

But really, these posts are all about the paintings, so here are a few of my favourites that I found on his website. Check out the website for yourself here.

Blancmange

First 9 Teacups

These paintings make me happy, it's funny how art can do that.

But anyway, I'm heading out to high tea at the Heritage Hotel this weekend so watch out for that review next week. Have a fantastic weekend and enjoy the sunshine!

H xo