Claire's Cake Bake & Other Foodiness

What a mad few days! I really don’t know where to begin.

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and Santa brought you some nice gifts. He certainly stopped here as I am now overwhelmed by lots of glorious & mostly foodie presents. To mention, but a few, I am now the proud owner of Simon Rimmers the accidental vegetarian which I cant wait to use. I also have (having arrived today!) the Best-kept Secrets of the Women’s Institute Jams, Pickles & Chutneys. I have a spoon rest, a new super-dooper set of scales, a years subscription to Delicous magazine, the very large & new Gordon Ramsay book and a beautiful Nigella cake stand in cream.

I also got my very own website which I will be moving to soon (I very much hope you’ll join me there). All I can say for now is Hubby is a lovely and very talented man - I have a new logo already - we just need to work on the website layout & content. So keep your eyes peeled for that!

Food-wise, we enjoyed a fantastic (as usual) Christmas day dinner at my mum & dads. We had smoked salmon blini with avocado, mango & chilli salsa. It was really really nice. Hubby had a sausage (its a long term joke in our family) as he doesn’t really like smoked salmon.

The main meal was Turkey with sausages, the-bestest-ever-stuffing (this is my favouritest part), roasted potatoes & roasted parsnips (in goose fat) so they were really crispy, carrots, sprouts (or for me, just one for tradition, I’m really not keen), bread sauce & cranberry sauce (i forgot to take mine, duh!).

Pudding was either Christmas pudding & brandy sauce or my mums triffle - loaded with sherry.

I will be making a smaller version of our feast, hopefully, at the weekend just for Hubby & I.

Oh, and our main present between ourselves was our lovely new digital SLR camera. My Gran was amused as I just took photos of anything that didn’t move all day long! So here are some of our snaps…

The second part of my pre-Christmas cooking started yesterday with Cranberry & Sloe Gin Sauce - a recipe I found on The Cottage Smallholder.

You’ll need:

• 300g cranberries
• 4 clementines - squeezed with some pulp
• 120g granulated white sugar
• 25ml Sloe Gin

How to Do It

1. Wash the cranberries thoroughly - taking out any soft fruit
2. Wash the clementines and then squeeze the juice out of them (i did this by hand quite easily)
3. Put the cranberries in a large pan together with the sugar and clementine juice and pulp - mix around
4. Turn the heat on under the pan to allow the mixture to come up to a simmer then taste for sweetness, adding extra sugar if you desire
5. Pop the lid on the pan and let it simmer for about 15 to 20 minutes until all berries have burst and it resembles a jam type consistency
6. Take off the heat and stir in the sloe gin
7. Decant into warm sterilised jars

Ps: Just wanted to say a quick hello to anyone popping by here after following the C4 food website link :)