Gingerbread

I have very sweet memories of decorating gingerbread men in my Nanna's kitchen as a child, as well as my Aunty Isabel's beautifully adorned gingerbread houses for the Christmas table. So I was delighted to find that my next afternoon tea experiment was gingerbread!

The ingredients are so simple; things you just find ordinarily in the pantry. Putting the bits and pieces together was quite easy too, and I really relished the kneading of the dough, I love getting my hands into what I make!

After some fridge time, I had to roll out the dough. I think I've discovered that it is not so much my ability to roll dough that's the problem as my bench top and my rolling pin do not like doing their job with me in preparing dough. I do think it requires a fair bit of team work between your implements and yourself in such a process. However, I did use a copious amount of flour on both surfaces to attempt to improve my dough rolling experience.

I cut the pieces with a fluted circle cutter and put them in the oven. There were two full oven trays of biscuits, enough to overfill my largest biscuit jar!

I decorated them with white icing with little squiggles. Next time, I will be a little more confident in how the icing works, and will hopefully do prettier decorations.

This is a recipe to keep for sure. They are just the yummiest, so easy to make, and last for ages.

This batch has so far been shared with my husband, our mortgage broker, buddies Chris, Bec and Ben, and a few just for myself with a cup of tea. Lovely.

Nelly's Apple Shortcake

This one was fun!

Firstly the shortcake was easily buzzed about with the beaters with only a few ingredients, so simple, and they turned out perfectly (and made the house smell delightful!).

I prepared the apples slightly differently from the recipe. I was a little hesitant about how they would turn out, as I normally do things by the book! But I cooked them just the right amount and they were tender and sweet, perfect for filling a shortcake.

The whipped cream was great. I love beating cream until it gets a little life of its own and becomes so light, fluffy and a wonderful accompaniment to any sweet thing. This recipe required it to be spread on top of the shortcake, and it spread beautifully across the top and looked so pretty.

The end result: all flavours mixed to become a lovely afternoon tea treat to share with my friend Aimee (and little Ethan) on Thursday and then with my parents and husband on Friday.

I loved sharing this cake with people who are dear to me and it is on my list to make again in the future.

New Year's Resolutions and Lemon Meringue Pie

Can you smell that?

Someone's been baking. I can detect sweet pastry and lemon zest on the breeze. Mmmm....

So Christmas has passed us once again and we've reached the New Year. This is worth noting as these two things are my reason for starting up this blog.

At Christmas, my gift-giving extraordinaire sister-in-law gave me a lovely gift. It consisted of a set of book labels by Poppies for Grace as well as a recipe book called afternoon tea.

As soon as I saw this book, I knew I would love it. It is pink for one thing (I just can't help loving that aspect) and it is full of recipes that mums, aunties and grandmothers make. It is made by frankie magazine and it has the same pretty photography and sweetness that I find in the magazine.

So that is the Christmas side of things.

As for the New Year, well, a personal challenge to myself is to bake each item in the book, 40 in all. I figure I can do that in a year, say, one a week and that means that I can take some holiday leave if need be. My brother-in-law suggested that I create a blog, a la Julie & Julia, and write about my experiences with each recipe.

Et voila, this is my blog.

Lemon Meringue Pie:

I got a real kick out of buying the ingredients from the shops as well as a lovely flan tin to make my pie really pretty, but as I started making the pastry dough I remembered how frustrating I find making pastry.

I don't know what it is about me and dough, but there is always a massive mess and it is never simple. They never mention this being an issue when writing the recipes, so I assume it's just me. And the dough. This time, I think it was because the egg was too large, because I did everything else by the book! To the gram amount!

However, with a bit of extra dry ingredient, the pastry did eventually come together and make it into the tin ready for blind baking. It worked really nicely in the end, not too crumbly or hard. Fantastique!

The lemon filling needed to be thicker when put in the pastry case, as it came out rather runny, but it still tasted delicious and zesty. I'll just ensure to cook it for longer to thicken it up next time.

And the meringue. Funnily enough, with all the baking I've done over time, I haven't made any meringue, and it worked beautifully. Although, next time, I wouldn't cook it so long as it lost the pretty white colour and was a little too brown as you will note from the picture (taken by my dear husband, Chris, the photographer guy).

And so, week one of my 2010 personal challenge complete, I enjoyed a piece of my lemon meringue pie for afternoon tea with Chris (who, not surprisingly, is a fan of my New Year's resolution!).