a little bit savoury | a whole lot sweet
For the months leading up to Christmas 2015 I kept changing my mind as to what dessert I was going to make. It had to be special as it was our turn to host Christmas again so I considered macarons, meringues, a giant cupcake and even a gingerbread house.
All of that went out of the window when I came across a video from Rosie’s Dessert Spot in my YouTube subscription list for a Christmas Wreath Cake. It was what I had been waiting for and Rosie made it look so simple I had to give it a go!
Christmas this year was hosted by the hubby’s parents which we were very excited about. We have hosted Christmas lunch for the previous two years, which was fun don’t get me wrong, but 2013 had its fair share of rough moments which left neither of us feeling very Christmas-y.
That didn’t get us out of a couple of jobs for Christmas lunch which were making the chicken, which the hubby was in charge of, and a cake for dessert to go with my mother-in-law’s Cassata (there is a law that Cassata has to be made each year for our family Christmas or there will be trouble). After changing my mind 500 times about what I was going to make, on Christmas Eve I decided to go with a common theme from this year of cupcake cakes and made a Christmas Tree Cupcake Cake.
For this month’s Daring Bakers Challenge, it was time for me to try something that I had been wanting to for a while now. Whoopie Pies are an American treat which you don’t see much of here in Australia, well at least in my part of the world and are a cross between a cookie and a cake with two of them being sandwiched together by some kind of sweet filling.
For my Whoopie Pies, I originally thought of red velvet given my obsession but as it was the silly festive season I decided to make some Christmas Candy Cane Whoopie Pies instead using a recipe from JoyofBaking.com.
After having Christmas at our house last year, the hubby was pretty keen to host it again pretty well deciding that day. So the hunt began for a new dessert to top the Bûche de Noël from last year. I toyed with a couple of different “trees”, being macaron or meringue as well as a cake decorated with fondant from the front of the Creative SugarCraft magazine. Given the hubby’s immense dislike of fondant the last idea was thrown out the window but then I recalled a post on Raspberri Cupcakes’ blog for a red velvet cake with snowman macarons. It was very much reflecting a white Christmas, which we do not have here in Australia (although my parents inform me they did have snow many moons ago on Christmas Day) but it was still a winner in my books.
On the last day of work before we shut down until after New Year, there is a morning tea. Last time around I made Marshmallow Christmas Trees and this year was going to stick with the “treat on a stick” theme and make some Oreo pops. However, they didn’t want to stay on the sticks so ended up being Oreo truffles instead, decorated like a Christmas pudding.
The hubby and I moved into our new house the week before Christmas in 2010. On that day, our parents made a reservation for Christmas 2011 to be held at our house. That was fine by us as we both love to cook (needless to say, our house was basically built around our kitchen)
So in the months before Christmas we were working out a menu, and most importantly, what the dessert centrepiece would be.