On the weekend I´ll be having some friends over for an afternoon tea and I just finished deciding on the menue. It was very hard to bring it down to the ‚absolute minimum‘ as my head is full with new recipes I want to try. The result is a super rich mouthwatering sequence of sweetness with a little kick from the egg nog. An indulgence for the holiday season. As you know: Christmas calories don´t count.
All the deer that are spending the summer together in a box in the attic are starting their season gathering on the stairs. Last year they spread themselves all around the house, but it seems that this year they stay together to be more impressive.
This year the front porch Christmas decoration is all about ribbons and making it cozy for Santa so that he feels comfortable, stays long and leaves a lot of gifts behind for me. You must know I have been very good this year. I tried to set it up like it could be his living room. If he is up for a little skiing he can do that as well.
This weekend, my hubby is in trouble as I told him that we`ll be setting up the Christmas decoration. Since he is responsible for outside lighting, this means serious work. Only 4 weeks to go, so stay tuned, there’ll be lot’s of pics coming up. Since the hubby was not willing to get photographed standing on the ladder grumpy as nothing seemed to work, here´s me adjusting the front porch.
I promised some more photos from the season opening Christmas buffet at Dani’s store. The cookies and cakes are mostly about presentation and making the people feel comfortable. The guests who are coming, knowing already that the taste of gingerbread and co will be amazing, so I tried to show off a really „picture perfect“ buffet table, which is stylish and meaningful. First, I am very proud of my Hemisphere Chocolate Cake impression of an English Christmas Pudding. The problem here nobody dared to start eating and cutting it.
I tried to also make cake buffet signs that look like wooden signs. For the actual black signs I used very dark chocolate cookie dough with red sugar icing and a little white icing for the snow on top of it. The white signs are regular cookie dough flooded with white royal icing. For the booth itself I simply used the one that I created in summer and gave it a little Christmasy look.
For the Chocolate Cake Christmas Tree, I used a new baking mold which appeared to be pretty difficult to handle as the top of the tree is very thin compared to the bottom leading to different baking times. I applied some tin foil to the top for cooling.
To create the Ginger Bread Christmas Tree, I used a special Cookie Mold that I found at Lakeland in the UK. Lot´s of stars in different sizes irregulary glued together with icing make a perfekt crooked tree with a Ginger bread man on top of it.
Since we do not have any tableware in the store, people need to eat out of their hands. Millionaire Shortbread and mini Christmas Guglhupf cakes come in handy here. I also made small Pumpkin Spice cakes that were gone with two bites.
The rest of the cookie dough I used for smaller Christmas Trees or little Hangtags and a very cute Reindeer Cookie featuring, of course, a red nose.
