I have only been writing my blog for a few months now and have loved the little community I have entered and the friends I have made. 

One of the first friends I made was Karen who writes the beautiful blog Lavender and Lovage. She writes about seasonal flavours and local produce from her kitchens in France and England. Karen has a gorgeous writing style and includes snippets of history and poetry in her posts. She has also mastered the art of taking stunning photos of her food. Do pop along and make a new friend.

As soon as I saw these little snowflake cakes I knew I would be making them for Christmas. Firstly, you need to whip up the Wee Whisky Cakes, then after feeding them with whisky for a week it is time to ice and decorate them with snowflakes. Rather than show you my version I thought it would be best for Karen to guest post and show us how to make these lovely cakes in her own words. Mine will be added to the food hampers I am making as gifts. Now over to Karen....

Wee Whisky Doused Hogmanay Dundee Cakes 
A gentle meander down the lane to the local Farm Shop........that early morning pearly light that shimmers over barren fields; the sharpness of first breath as you leave the warm cocoon of home. The crackle and snap of feet kicking through crisply fallen leaves and then the glorious vision of sizzling leaves of gold, orange, bronze and flame red; beech and bracken, elm and elder, all bedecked in gaudy colours and now showing more than they should, branches blatantly on show with sparse leaves to cover their dignity.......smoke suspended in the air above toy cottages and tidy terrace houses. Family dogs barking by wooden garden gates and cats skulking behind ragged hedgerows whilst seaside gulls wheel above, squawking and shrieking with delight as they are lured by the richer pickings of "inland" dining.  

In the manner of "The Night Before Christmas" visions of a full baking day dances through my head....baking with my Mum and tasting with Dad; a day of warm ovens, flour shakers, jumbo free range eggs and plump raisins. Cake tins of yesterday and old Tala measures, it's a warm Victoria sponge day of bliss, jam, icing sugar and happiness. Lists are checked, ingredients checked off and the kettle whistles a starting signal, on your marks, get set........

Ingredients:
300g luxury dried mixed fruit
50g mixed peel
100g light brown sugar
100g butter, unsalted
150ml water
juice of 1 clementine
1 large egg
200g self raising flour
25g ground almonds
1 teaspoon mixed spice
grated zest of a clementine
Scotch whisky 

One batch of the following cake mix makes 8 to 10 muffin size cakes.

Baking Mad, Mich Turnerand Mini Snow Flake Christmas Cakes
I was lucky enough to receive a wonderful Mich Turner cake decorating kit recently from Baking Mad, which is one of my very favourite websites for fabulous inspirational baking recipes. In my kit there was a pack of ready to roll Madagascan Vanilla White Icing, ready to roll finest quality Marzipan, Gold Lustre, Pearl Lustre and Bronze Lustre ~ the makings of a creative decorating set for cakes and bakes. Mich Turner is famous for setting up The Little Venice Cake Company in London where she has created cakesfor celebrities and international royalty including Her Majesty The Queen, Madonna, Pierce Brosnan, Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne, Cheryl Cole, Gordon Ramsay and David Beckham. She has recently launched this cake decorating range with Silver Spoon, and it is this fabulous new range that I received fromBaking Mad to review.  If you are looking for the snowflake cutters they can be bought online here. 

The ready to roll marzipan was a dream to work with and smelt strongly of almonds, which we like in our household. I brushed the cakes with warm sieved apricot jam before cutting out the marzipan rounds with a Tala measure! It was the perfect size for the cakes. 
I eased the rolled marzipan over the cakes and gently moulded it over the cakes before using a handle from a rolling pin to ease the marzipan around the sides of the cakes. I let the marzipan dry for about 3 hours before decorating the cakes with the vanilla icing. The ready to roll icing was just as easy to handle as the marzipan and has a subtle but obvious vanilla flavour. It rolled out easily, was smooth and silky, and was very easy to manipulate.  

Now comes the part that I love ~ the creative bit, decorating the cakes; I cut out rounds of the rolled icing to just slightly larger than the cakes and eased it over the top of the marzipan.......I painted some of the pearl lustre over the cakes and then sprinkled some edible glitter over the top......now to the snow flakes. I have a "plunger" snow flake cutter in three sizes that I used, you need to roll the icing out fairly thickly so they keep their shape when they are applied to the cakes. 

The pearl lustre is a perfect "glue" for the snow flake shapes, and saved me from having to use an egg white, which is what I normally use to "glue" on sugar craft decorations. I also painted some more pearl lustre over the snow flakes and shook a bit more edible glitter over the tops for good measure. I stamped out several sizes of snow flakes as I like random decorations, and I was really pleased how these cakes turned out. The lustres add a professional finish to the cakes and gives a wonderful sheen. I was very impressed with the quality of these products and the marzipan is high in almonds whilst the icing has a natural vanilla flavour. 

With thanks to Baking Mad for sending me this decorating kit to review; I was very impressed with the quality and the flavours of the marzipan and icing were almost home-made ~ the liquid lustres make a stunning and professional finish to all sugar craft decorating and I certainly added a magical snowy sheen to my Christmas cakes as you can see from the photos. 

Thank you Karen! Don't forget to pop along to Karen's blog Lavender and Lovage for daily food inspiration.

This homemade peppermint foot scrub makes a really lovely Christmas gift. I had a few friends over yesterday to make these scrubs. Making them with friends is firstly more fun and it helps to split the costs. 

To make a few jars you need:
1 packet of granulated sugar
Mild olive oil
Peppermint extract
Green food colouring
Jars. I used cleaned nutella jars.

Method:
Pour out some sugar and add olive oil until you get a nice scrub consistency. Add a little peppermint extract and a tiny bit of food colouring. Add to jars and decorate with ribbon and labels. 

These are great to use and the olive oil leaves feet nice and moisturised. Don't worry the food colouring doesn't spread to your feet! I cut out circles or tissue paper to cover my lids.

Bye Bye Birdie recently put up this gorgeous sleepy bird tutorial. So I whipped up some of these with a friend at the weekend. We used blue felt for ours and put a little bit of lavender in with the stuffing so that people can hang them in their wardrobes. 

We are planning to give them as little gifts to a few people. 

I cannot resist good chocolates. Especially ones that come in gorgeous turquoise packaging! After the Let's Make Christmas event at Fortnum and Mason last Friday
I just had to have a wander round the amazing store. Before long I was standing in front of this counter.

I decided to treat myself and picked 11 gorgeous chocolates for £10 to take home and delicately munch over the weekend. They were gorgeous and my favourite is this amazing little owl.

On this layer there is also a rose nougat, dark brandy truffle and the stripy one was a beautiful coconut chocolate.

Grab some felting supplies and felt this jumper for yourself or someone for Christmas. To find out more about needle felting and supplies read this guide. For this jumper I used a stencil to help me demark the shape. 

1. Take the jumper
2. Place your foam pad inside
3. Start needle felting the shape you want
4. Turn the jumper inside out and felt from the other side.
5. Make sure all fibres are meshed together

This is Susan from  A Little Bit of Heaven on a Plate idea.

"Something a bit different, not a recipe, a review, a cake, or a book...but instead more about other food bloggers and a game of tag. I know its Christmas pre-baking prepping season and we've not time to dust a rolling pin, but what the heck, lets have a bit of fun!"

This is a "tag" where I am supposed to answer 10 questions that tell you a little bit more about myself. So here goes!




1. What, or who inspired you to start a blog?
I had been reading blogs for quite a while and often used them for inspiration for recipes or crafts. I got addicted to pinterest and thought about how I could take this further. A blog seemed like the way forward.

2. Who is your foodie inspiration?
My foodie inspiration is definitely my mum. She taught and encouraged me to cook.

3. Your greasiest, batter - splattered food/drink book is?
One of Jamie's books and the recipe binder I stick all my favourite recipes in, and now my laptop as I am often referring to a recipe on my or someone else's blog!

4. Tell us all about the best thing you have ever eaten in another country, where was it, what was it?
An absolutely stunning six course menu at a French Chateau in Beanue. I was only 15 and it was the first time I had duck. The whole meal was amazing.

5. Another food bloggers table you'd like to eat at is?
I would love to eat at Karen from Lavender and Lovage's table. All her recipes look delicious.

6. What is the one kitchen gadget you would ask Santa for this year (money no object of course)?
I would love a Kitchen Aid but if not I will make do with a set of two matching round cake tins. Currently working with different sizes!

7. Who taught you how to cook?
My mum and all the bloggers out there.

8. I'm coming to you for dinner what's your signature dish?
Well I am not very good at main meals but can do a mean roast with brilliant roast potatoes and have learnt Greg's French mum's Beef Bourguinon. For dessert you would get Blackberry and Apple cake or Chocolate Brownies with a Raspberry Coulis 

9. What is your guilty food pleasure? 
Chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate

10. Reveal something about yourself that others would be surprised to learn?
I have an archaeology degree and love F1.

Finally...tag 5 other food bloggers with these questions...like a hot baked potato...pass it on! Link up with the hashtag #foodbloggersunplugged on Twitter...... 

Ren Behan, Urvashi Botanical Baker, Ella who write The Lost Art of Eating, Julia at Eat Healthy But Tasty, Amy at Weekly Bake Off

So I had a fantastic afternoon at Fortnum and Mason yesterday meeting fellow bloggers who have all been busy baking for Christmas. 

This was the brain child of the lovely and very hard working Vanessa Kimbell, author of Prepped, a book which I think is now going to make it onto my Christmas list for its beautiful pictures and lovely recipes.

I met so many people that I spend my days tweeting with like Karen and Lavender and Lovage, Ren Behan, Urvashi Botanical Baker and Laura from How to Cook Good Food. I definitely plan to make some of Laura's ginger Cordial.  

I also met lots of bloggers I haven't spoken to before such as Hannah from Corner Cottage Bakery.

We all brought along our home made gifts for swapping and to enter into a competition. There were lots of fantastic entries and the competition was very still but my chutney at least got shortlisted to the Dan Lepard tasting stage. 

This is what I took along for the swap and competition. The Christmas Cranberry Chutney (making a 2nd batch this morning). White Chocolate and Cranberry Cookies and my special Christmassy Orange Mince Pies.
I didn't manage to see who went home with my gifts so I hope they will get in touch.

There are some people I didn't get round to meeting last night but funnily enough all the gifts I drew out from the draw were from people I had spent a long time chatting to. These were all people I had never spoken to on the blogosphere before.

I receieved these beautiful glittery star Cornish Fairings from Ella who write The Lost Art of Eating and this lovely Mulled Wine Syrup which I may have to try tonight!

My last gift was Apple, Cranberry, Fig and Walnut Chutney from Julia at Eat Healthy But Tasty. I am really looking forward to following Julia's blog as I am good at cooking baked goods but really needs some inspirational help for my health dinners.

I also want to point out these gorgeous truffles made by Laura at Craftstorming. There are absolutely gorgeous. I make truffles every year but mine are always a bit rough and ready looking, even though they taste fab. I might be leaning on Laura to share her skills so I can one day be this good!

Just to finish up here are some of my favourite things form the Fortnum and Mason displays. I have to confess I did spend £10 on the most wonderful chocolates. I will blog these in a separate post. All in all, a fantastic event and huge thanks to Vanessa for arranging it. I really loved the opportunity to meet like minded blog and twitter friends. 

I am so sorry I have been a bit off the radar this week but I have been super busy with some training.

Anyway I am so excited to say that I am attending the Fornum and Mason Let's Make Christmas meet up today. I have been adding all my home made goodies to the list that Vanessa is creating and am also entering today's competition.

It will be my first time entering a proper foodies competition and meeting up with fellow bloggers so I am a little nervous. Anyway hope to see some of you there.  If you can't make it I will be showing you my entries and letting you know what I came back with. Have a good Friday.

I love the combination of white chocolate and cranberries for Christmas. This is one of my entries for the Fortnum and Mason meetup arranged by Vanessa Kimbell.

Ingredients
225g softened butter
150g caster sugar
250g self raising flour
1 large eggs
100g white chocolate chips
50g dried cranberries

The recipe below makes about 12 large cookies.


Method 
Mix everything together
Divide the mixture into four pieces and roll into logs. Cover with baking parchment and clingfilm and place in the fridge. 
You can keep the mixture in the fridge for a week or freeze for 3 months. Defrost in the fridge before using.


To cook, heat the oven to 190C. Take the chilled dough and slice the roll into thin sections. 
Place these on a baking sheet and cook for 10 minutes or until golden.
Leave to cool and firm up on the baking tray. 

So I'm not sure if it is too early for mince pies but I just had to make some of these for Let's Make Christmas at Fortnum and Mason tomorrow. 

After making these mince pies a few years ago I have never turned back and really don't like shop bought ones any more. If you are not a fan of orange just leave the zest out and use water to bring the pastry together.

I made my own mincemeant earlier here.




Ingredients
250g plain flour
20g caster sugar
125g butter
Orange zest
Orange juice
Mincemeat
Makes 18

Method
1. Rub butter and flour together
2. Add sugar and orange zest
3. Use juice to bring together
4. Knead
5. Cool in the fridge until needed

Making the mince pies
Method
Roll out the pastry and cut bases and lids and place them in a greased pie tin.
Add the mincemeat and place the lid on making sure it is crimped or stuck down with a little milk.
Brush the top with a little milk
Cook for 10 minutes until golden brown at 190C
Serve warm with Cointreau butter

Original recipe – Delicious Magazine