Christmas Sweets

I felt in the mood to make some Christmas sweets this week.  Something I haven't done for years.  I used to make them regularly when I was teaching at adult education, as truffles were part of my last week of term demo (and of course the students all got to have a taste too)

Christmas pud truffles on a marzipan "plate"

Hazelnut logs with royal iced decoration

Hazelnut logs again with a snowflake decoration

The sweets in on of the boxes I made.

The sweets are very easy to make being a mix of cake crumbs, apricot jam and hazelnute paste, which when cool is rolled into a sausage shape, and wrapped in marzipan (just like making sausage rolls).  the roll is thenbrushed with chocolate to resemble bark and cut into log shapes (and a perk is eating the odd end shapes!).  

The "puds" were just balls of the mix with a placed on a circle of marzi with melted choc to make it stick and a little chocolate drizzled over the top, and decorated.   You could of course just roll them in cocoa powder or vermicelli.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to all my followers.

A couple of quick photos today.  The first being a quick cake I made.

Simnel Cake

Beautiful Primroses

I couldn't resist taking this second photo.  We passed them on the way to Easter lunch at a hotel with one half of the family, and I made my husband slow down on the way home so that I could take this photo as I really thought it summer up Springtime and Easter.

So this was all by chance really, as for once I actually had my camera with me!   When we got home I decided to share the photo on a group I belong to on Facebook, and who should comment on it but a friend, whom we had not seen for 46 years.   So a very Happy Easter bunny here!

Visiting a Poorly Pal and a little cooking

One of my old school pals is a tad under the weather at the moment, and in quite a bit of pain, not helped by the fact that she is a carer for her husband who has a form of dementia, so she is struggling at the moment, so I popped over for a cuppa with her this afternoon to try and cheer her up.

Well I am not sure that I really cheered her up, but we had a good moan about our other halves, as we are both carers, and retirement has not brought forth what we had hoped.  Such is life!  However, it is good to talk and to get your moans off your chest.  We did have a few giggles along the way.

Hopefully I cheered her up with a plant, a small gift, and a card.  I hope that the Get Well Soon card will remind her hubby that all is not well with her at the moment when he sees it.

My pal likes art deco - so this was the little card I made.

and for some healing vibes, I made this hematite and pearl bracelet for her.  As hematite is supposed to have good healing powers.   Hope it helps.

Along with our cuppa we had some delicious melting moments biscuits from Asda.   Basically a lang du chat type biscuit, but round instead of long, and filled with chocolate.  Some of the nicest biscuits I have tasted for years.  Can see a visit to Asda coming soon!

After dinner I decided to attempt to make some, as I haven't made these little biscuits for nearly 50 years.  I have never had them filled before, that's what made them so delish!    I filled mine with nutella!   Not as even and round as the bought ones, but they tasted just as good.  They only took moment to make.

Whilst they were cooling down, I put the topping on the Simnel cake I cooked yesterday.