This month’s Daring Bakers challenge was an exciting one for a couple of reasons. Two of my favourite bloggers were hosting: Anna from Very Small Anna and Y from Lemonpi and they had chosen something that I had been dying to make for quite a while: a gingerbread house. This year Christmas crept up on me and the excitement I had at making this quickly faded when I glanced at the calendar. You know the movie scene where the pages are ripped from the calendar in fast succession signifying the rapidly passing time? I swear every time I looked at the date I felt like Christmas was running away from me in blocks of days or weeks.
Occasionally Y would email me and ask how the Gingerbread house was going. I’d answer her that it was going well and last week I told her that it was scheduled for the weekend but then the date came and passed. You see I had to battle fellow Christmas shoppers in the Bondi Junction car park (which never has enough spaces at the best of times, let alone Christmas time). I’d come home from Christmas shopping exhausted, hot and irritable. Not a good time to turn on the oven to make gingerbread.
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December 23, 2009
by Not Quite Nigella
I first saw this Salted Pretzel Toffee recipe on my lovely blogger friend Faith’s fabulous blog Thought 4 Food. I already have a slew of recipes of hers that I’ve bookmarked but the moment I saw this recipe I knew that I had found my Christmas Baking gift. Yes this year Christmas totally crept up on me. In fact I was fast asleep and Christmas had literally stolen into my house and screamed “BOO!” at me. It was the 17th of December and I was only just sending out my Christmas cards. For someone who always gets organised and puts the tree up on the 1st of December this was very embarrassing.
I needed to make this quickly as this was destined for my friends Gina and Teena as we were meeting up for the yearly present exchange ritual. Reading through the recipe I was surprised at how easy it was, even though there was toffee involved. There were only two paragraphs worth of instructions and I have everything to hand except for the mini pretzels so I bought these and made the whole thing in the space of 30 minutes (not including setting time).
OCD Pretzel sorting
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December 22, 2009
by Not Quite Nigella
I was at a convent flicking through an issue of Delicious. Yes you heard right, I was at a Convent. I hadn’t checked myself in I should clarify though. It was a convent in Orange where I was having lunch. I was looking through the latest issue of Delicious and murmuring and pointing to various items when suddenly I turned over a page and my heart skipped a beat. It’s that moment. You know the moment, when you’re obsessed with food and you see something that just hits all the buttons. This recipe for rose scented creams with lychees and raspberries spoke to me in a most come-hither enticing way. It also helped that we had a box of the freshest picked berries and cherries in the car waiting to be transported into our fridge at home. That moment my stomach leaped in excitement. I had to make them.
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December 17, 2009
by Not Quite Nigella
I didn’t quite pick the right day to make these gingerbread cookies. It was on the afternoon of my High School Reunion and I thought that it would be a good chance to take my mind off it. I had decided to go to the reunion not due in small part to the fact that two friends had contacted me and we had agreed to walk in together. I wrote last week of my trepidation at attending my High School Reunion. For the days preceding the reunion I was indeed going back and forth on whether I’d attend and now the decision was made. I had RSVPd and I had to go.
*Eeek!*
This wasn’t a Romy and Michelle revenge situation mind you although I have to say that the movie helped to crystallise High School Reunion anxiety perfectly. It was pretty much a normal cliquey all girls school and nothing to get too upset about. But the idea of the reunion was enough to make one a bit nervous. And whilst I thought these gingerbread cookies would take my mind off it, I didn’t realise how long they would take. By the time they were all done and dusted (literally dusted with sugar), it was several hours later standing on my feet and my legs were aching. This was a worry as I had intended to wear high heels that night.
I met my friends beforehand and we walked in. I was a little stunned. It appeared that half of the people had frozen in time and were instantly recognisable whilst others were barely recognisable and this was usually due to hair change or weight gain. Some of the skinniest, prettiest girls were much more generously proportioned and I had to look at their name tags to recognise them and others simply looked nothing like they used to.
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December 15, 2009
by Not Quite Nigella
I won’t lie. When I saw this recipe, all 18 pages of it I wasn’t happy. I may have even sworn. December is a busy enough time as it is without making a dish that has 6 elements to it. There was absolutely no way I could make this before Christmas with my packed schedule so I shelved this for a New Year’s Eve celebration. A few days before NYE I made it with some help from Angela from A Spoonful of Sugar who coaxed me off the window ledge so to speak. She also gave me the inspiration for the Ispahan themed buche.
I should have taken the opt out option for this one in hindsight but the idea of an Ispahan buche was too tempting. What I didn’t count on was the mousse part, usually a fairly easy item to make causing a lot of trouble. I used the 1/3 cup specified and it turned into something like scrambled eggs. I then asked on the website and someone else said that 1/3 of a cup worked fine but I just can’t see how what I had would have worked in any way. I made another version of the ganache but I don’t think this was ideal so I can’t comment on the ganache insert recipe below as I didn’t try it.
Another element that I had trouble with was the icing. I didn’t have any gelatine leaves left (and I certainly wasn’t in the mood to track down some more) so I wasn’t sure how to follow the recipe to use powder even though the recipe specified that powder could be used. I dissolved the gelatine into the almost boiling milk and glucose syrup (I didn’t want to dissolve it in water in case it introduced too much water into the icing) but by the time the gelatine powder had dissolved, the milky mixture was too cold to melt the chocolate and butter so it had to go back on the stove. I also waited until it coated the back of a spoon but it was still too runny then too.
Then there was the drama about the acetate, I wanted a dome shaped buche so I read that you simply line the loaf tin with the acetate and that’s all you need to do. Apparently not, as mine turned out as a loaf shape and whilst I tried lining the sides, some mousse seeped out (as well as some raspberry puree). This was exacerbated by the mousse being runnier than normal as I’d tried to save it from the recipe error before.
Would I recommend making it? Sadly, probably not. Well I think most of the elements are delicious by themselves, especially the feuillete which I could happily eat by itself in bucketloads but the overall production was it was far too stressful for me to wholeheartedly recommend, especially if you don’t have the help of a dishwasher (I did 6 sinkfuls of dishes for this). However it is spectacular looking I will admit (well other people’s buches are anyway) so I’d save this for when you a) have 2 days in which to prepare it and b) when you have someone helping you out. And when you have a lot of patience. A few days after I tried this and I found that when thawed, the log was divine, ambrosial, perfection. So does this mean there’s another version coming up next year? Who knows…time has a way of dulling memories 
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December 29, 2008
by Not Quite Nigella
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