Sweet treats this Christmas

Christmas cake, mince pies, stollen and lebkuchen. Usually for us it's a choice between these for us, but this year we seem to have all four. And when I thought more about them, I realised that for each of them we have our own traditions, and I expect you do too.

Christmas cake, for example, you can probably see in the picture below it's still in its cellophane. It's clearly not one I've made and we don't tend to make a Christmas cake. Christmas pudding yes, but not Christmas cake. This one was part of one of our early Christmas presents from our early family Christmas, at the start of the month. I'm a big fan of Christmas cake, and quite often we leave my parents and my in-laws with a chunk of cake, which is always very welcome.

But the one thing about Christmas cake is we never eat it before Christmas Day. And actually after Christmas lunch, a snooze and a turkey sandwich in the evening, there's often not much room for cake, but it's always worth a try, isn't it?

Mince pies on the other hand, for us they're perfectly acceptable to eat in the run up to Christmas and we'll probably have almost a box a week. We'll eat them over Christmas too, but it's unlikely that we'll buy any more once it gets to January. I made mincemeat once, a while back now, when I was clearly feeling more industrious, and it tasted good. I remember it made a lot, but it's the sort of thing that keeps, and matures well. Maybe I'll make it again another year, but in the meantime we've still got these to eat.

It's only relatively recently that I've added lebkuchen to our repetoire. These pictured, along with the stollen are by Bahlsen and arrived in the post, slightly battered, but still tasty. It was only last year that I made a Finnish version, somehow it seems longer ago than that.

Stollen is another favourite of mine and I'd quite happily eat this all year round.  The marzipan in this one is more like a swiss roll than how I'd expected it to be. I've not made a stollen, but I think it's something I'd definitely give a go. I'd made something similar, an Almond Kringle Wreath and that tasted way better than it looked!  Although I personally think anything containing marzipan is a winner! 

And both of these German treats, we eat in the run up to Christmas too. I'm not sure if that's because they're newer to us, and not part of our childhood traditions, or just because we're making our new traditions with them, and like how they taste!  So while I settle in and help myself to at least one of these, let me know about your traditions with cake at Christmas. 

And if you're wondering about my Christmas stocking, then pop back on Christmas Eve and I'll share more about its story then.

* This is a collaborative post, with thanks to Bahlsen who sent me these German treats to try. As ever, all views and opinions are my own.

Tobacco Dock, a golden bike and taking it slow

It's been a while since I told you about the madeleines we made at A Taste of London, but as it was a festive food festival I thought I'd better share some more of what we got up to, before we're all done with the festiveness. Besides the cookery class there was lots to do, it was my first time at Tobacco Dock, so I couldn't help myself but look at the building, or its structure.

I hadn't realised that it's a Grade I listed warehouse, or built around 1811. But by its name I guessed that its purpose was linked to imported tobacco, and it primarily served as a store for this. It's comprised of brick buildings, and lots of ironwork, but the roof is pretty special too.

And of course, with it being a food festival, at the bottom of this ironwork dome was a barbecue.

As we wandered around there was so much to see, and lots of food and drink to try. We may have done several rounds of our favourite stalls. This bag, made me smile...

OOPS! DID I BUY CHAMPAGNE INSTEAD OF MILK AGAIN...?

I mean, what an awful mistake to make!

And then before I knew it, I was snapping this golden bike almost as I was past it.  The golden tyre's are pretty special.

We found the most beautifully decorated cakes. And not only that they came in the most gorgeous tin. They looked so bright, colourful and gorgeous that it would *almost* be a shame to cut them, almost!  But they'd certainly make a great centrepiece to any occasion.

We ate at Bubbledogs and Cafe Spice Namaste, and while the food was tasty the portion sizes were small. We shared three plates but we could have easily eaten three plates each. I think that's partly why we headed over to the Big Easy at Canary Wharf for an early dinner as we left here. I think if you want good food then A Taste of London is a good place to get that, and to get a wide variety too, but it's not somewhere to go for a feast, as each small plate cost £5/£6 a piece, unless you're feeling rather flush.

The exception that we found was the small shop  - or bar - serving Yeni Raki. We were enticed in by the promise of somewhere to sit, as walking around tasting and eating and drinking had been pretty tiring work. Once inside we discovered that Yeni Raki was an aniseed flavoured drink. With memories of Pernod flooding back, we weren't too sure, but then again there were huge bean bags and places to sit. 

We had a glass of Yeni Raki and a plate of meze each and were pleasantly surprised, not only by the amount of food served up but by the price too. We both felt that this was more reasonable than the small plates we'd tried up until now.

And plonking ourselves down on the bean bags brought lots of photo opportunities too. And giving that their tagline was "unrush your world" we certainly weren't in any hurry to leave. But then again the longer we were on those bean bags, the harder it was to actually get up.

Summoning the will to leave we wandered around some more, bought some Cornish Gouda, yes I didn't know that was a thing either but it is, and very nice it is too. We spent some time choosing just the right maturity, and as always happens, I kept forgetting what the previous cheese had tasted like so had to try it all over again...

With the cheese bought and managing to i) avoid eating all the samples and ii) being thrown out of the cheese area, we headed over to check out the Ginvent calendars. Clearly the calendars weren't giving too much away, but I'd be happy opening each window to find a bottle of gin. Who wouldn't?

Next up we headed over to the craft beer trail, which wasn't too much of a trail more of a shuffle along with fellow ale drinkers around the L-shaped room. After the first route through we nipped back to the first stall, who'd appeared the most friendly and whose beers appealed most too. And who knew that Billericay had it's own brewery?  And if you're ever that way, I recommend the Billericay Dickie - partly for the name, but mostly for the taste!

There was quite a party atmosphere building, and I'm sure that it's a great place to go with a group of friends. I liked the cookery class and I liked the space, I liked discovering and trying some new food and drink, but I thought the small plates were expensive for what they were and while we had a great day, it's probably not somewhere I'd rush back to. I think the fact we went out for dinner on the way home speaks volumes, and even though we did end up with a doggy bag, that was due to the humongous portions at the restaurant!

But those aniseed drink people, I think they're onto something... 

* With thanks to AEG who gifted me entry into the show, as usual all views and opinions are my own.

My letter S

Inspiration finally struck for how to decorate this S a while back, in fact almost a month ago as I was writing about the wallpaper I fell for at the London Design Fair back in September. It was the wallpaper that drew me to their stand, and the one I left clutching. I said in my previous post that it wasn't right for our house, but it kept on at me. 

And so I hit on the idea of decorating the S that the lovely people at Pinty Plus sent me with my first spray cans of paint, remember when I gave my sewing box a new lease of life?  You'll know that I think the spray chalk paint is a fab thing, and the pastel colours I've used have fitted in well with our decor, but for this S I wanted something bolder.

I plan to have it in the craft-room-cum-study, so while I wanted it to be bold, it also needed to fit with the pigeon shelves in there. And so I set about spraying the S in the Light Turquoise as the shelves are close to the London Grey colour I used before. I remembered having some decoupage paper with a newspaper print on, but could I find it?  I found some tiny scraps, so in the end I realised that's all there was to find, and so I had to have a rethink.

I found this white and gold crackle effect decoupage paper - I bought it at the same time as the newspaper print paper, but didn't use it. And no doubt that's why there was very little of that left. But I thought it would work.

And actually I think it really does work, I like how it gives depth to the shape, and it's probably a better match than my original plan anyway. I added some small diamante flowers, while the glue was wet, because these do have a habit of attaching themselves to whatever they want, rather than what I want them to. Infact I arrived at work one day last week to find a purple diamante flower attached to my coat, I've no idea how it got there, or how it managed to stay stuck for so long.

My next challenge was how to decorate the S with the wallpaper. I could cover the front of the S with the wallpaper, but then there would have been little point spray painting would there. So I took my paper knife and cut out some of the distinctive wallpaper shapes, still managing to keep most of the sample untouched, and placed these on my S.

I'm rather pleased with how it turned out, especially as I had no clear plan when I started out, and the bit that I did have - the news print decoupage paper, I had to change anyway. A thoroughly enjoyable project, even though it took a while to complete. And one that reminded me (again) that crafting is good for the soul. Plus it'll also fit right into my craft room (or the study if MOH asks you!)

Do you find yourself changing your mind as you go in some craft projects? 

* With thanks to Novasol Spray UK who sent me the S at the start of the summer