Happy New Year 2014
As we had an entire "no snow"-Christmas, I wanted to take a "Happy New Year" picture out in the sun. However, it was a little colder than I thought, so I quickly added a Pumpkin Spice latte to the scenario for a proper last day of Dec feeling. Happy New Year.
Yummy Boxing Day Breakfast
with Sticky Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls & Eggnog Frosting and Gingerbread Man Shaped Granola. After Christmas, I wanted to do some fun breakfast. Question #1 was: How to combine my favorite Christmas items pumpkin, cinnamon and eggnog to something yummy? I decided to slightly change the recipe for cinnamon rolls from my book. Instead of adding potatoes, I used pumpkin mash. For the filling, I added pumpkin spice and one cup of eggnog to the original cream cheese frosting.
As granola is always a good option for breakfast, I just added one egg white to the recipe to make sure that the mixture will really glue together and stay in shape. The little guys look so cute, that I nearly did not want to bite their head or arms off! I also wrapped some up to have additional gifts for friends and neighbors. Normally I use cinnamon and some nutmeg as spice for the granola, but to give it a more winter feeling, I put in ginger and cloves in there as well.
As granola is always a good option for breakfast, I just added one egg white to the recipe to make sure that the mixture will really glue together and stay in shape. The little guys look so cute, that I nearly did not want to bite their head or arms off! I also wrapped some up to have additional gifts for friends and neighbors. Normally I use cinnamon and some nutmeg as spice for the granola, but to give it a more winter feeling, I put in ginger and cloves in there as well.
Christmas Stockings for furry friends
I have have spent the last two saturdays at the sewing machine. The idea was to make christmas stockings for a couple of friend's pets. I am convinced that every cute furry creature needs it`s own stocking where all the christmas gifts are stored. The challenge was, that the stocking matches the style of the owner. So I made a glamorous 'Flamant' colored stocking for Anna's not yet existing but highly anticipated puppy 'Caramel'. Gropius and Jack, two cats, got fish shape stockings. Actually Gropius is a purely white cat living in a 'Bauhaus' home, but the all over printed cats on the fabric where too cute to follow the rules. I hope that Gropius doesn't mind.
Happy Christmas Frohe Weihnachten Video
I admit it, I just love this song. So we decided to re-record it in German for this year´s Christmas video from Cute Cottage Overload. Wishing you a very happy Christmas, Frohe Weihnachten and a great new year. I still have some 'un-posted' Christmas pictures so they'll be coming up over the next days.
Santa´s Sweet Shop
Do you also always wonder where Santa is getting his sweets for the ones that have been good during the year ? I wanted to find out and set up his very own "Santa's Sweet Shop" on the wall of our living room. All the items and sweets are at his disposal, to give to the loved ones. In order for him to find the shop quickly, I place it at the end of the "Christmas Ornament Ball Street".
Preparations for the Christmas Market in our Street
Last weekend we had the Christmas Market in our street. The smart friends do not only show up when it starts in the afternoon, they announce themselves for breakfast. To give it a little Christmas kick I prepared a Pumpkin Spice Granola. It`s the regular recipe from my book with added pumpkin pie spice and canned pumpkin. Not to forget, Sunday was also the 15th birthday of our downhill bike professional neighbor Robert. Each year I ask him what kind of cake he likes to have. He can pick anything he wants but he always chooses Banana Cream with Vanilla wafers.
Christmas Chandeliers
You guessed it already, but the chandeliers in the living room can not stay undecortated. The fake horn one has a story of it´s own as it´s weight is above 40kg and various 'experts' refused to put it up there until our lovely neighbor saved the day. However, my husband still does not 'risk' to put valuable electronic devices below it. Well it looks nice and someone has written a very long wishlist for Santa and put it up there.
Christmas Window Decoration
I have already set up the Christmas decoration in our windows a couple of weeks back but my hubby refused to take pictures. He said that it does not make sense as long as there is no snow in the background. I can understand that. But once we had the first snow he told me that too much white makes it hard to get good pictures. Well, what can I say, after a little convincing he took them after all and I like them very much.
White Chocolate Cookies 'n' Cream Fudge
Do you like White Chocolate?, do you like Marshmallows?, do you like Oreo Cookies? Then you certainly love this White Chocolate Cookies 'n' Cream fudge. The White mixture of evaporated milk, white chocolate morsels und marshmallow cream is one of the best home made 'impersonations' of the Oreo white filling that I came across recently. So these sweet yummy bars might also be called 'Cookies fudged into home made white Oreo filling".
Santa´s Village on the Fireplace
This year Santa decided to set up an entire village on our main fireplace. With little shops, cafes and tin cars delivering christmas trees and other cute things. Santas electrician aka my hubby was a little grumpy setting the lights up as the different shops do not have the same lighting system. Well, Santa does not care about 'cables', he just want it to be nice. I am sure he will thank his electrician with a couple of gifts under the tree this year.
Why wait for Christmas?
On the weekend I´ll be having some friends over for an afternoon tea and I just finished deciding on the menue. It was very hard to bring it down to the 'absolute minimum' as my head is full with new recipes I want to try. The result is a super rich mouthwatering sequence of sweetness with a little kick from the egg nog. An indulgence for the holiday season. As you know: Christmas calories don´t count.
Front Porch Christmas Decoration
This year the front porch Christmas decoration is all about ribbons and making it cozy for Santa so that he feels comfortable, stays long and leaves a lot of gifts behind for me. You must know I have been very good this year. I tried to set it up like it could be his living room. If he is up for a little skiing he can do that as well.
Setting up the Christmas Decoration
This weekend, my hubby is in trouble as I told him that we`ll be setting up the Christmas decoration. Since he is responsible for outside lighting, this means serious work. Only 4 weeks to go, so stay tuned, there'll be lot's of pics coming up. Since the hubby was not willing to get photographed standing on the ladder grumpy as nothing seemed to work, here´s me adjusting the front porch.
I smell something Yummy - Christmas from the Oven
I promised some more photos from the season opening Christmas buffet at Dani's store. The cookies and cakes are mostly about presentation and making the people feel comfortable. The guests who are coming, knowing already that the taste of gingerbread and co will be amazing, so I tried to show off a really "picture perfect" buffet table, which is stylish and meaningful. First, I am very proud of my Hemisphere Chocolate Cake impression of an English Christmas Pudding. The problem here nobody dared to start eating and cutting it.
I tried to also make cake buffet signs that look like wooden signs. For the actual black signs I used very dark chocolate cookie dough with red sugar icing and a little white icing for the snow on top of it. The white signs are regular cookie dough flooded with white royal icing. For the booth itself I simply used the one that I created in summer and gave it a little Christmasy look.
For the Chocolate Cake Christmas Tree, I used a new baking mold which appeared to be pretty difficult to handle as the top of the tree is very thin compared to the bottom leading to different baking times. I applied some tin foil to the top for cooling.
To create the Ginger Bread Christmas Tree, I used a special Cookie Mold that I found at Lakeland in the UK. Lot´s of stars in different sizes irregulary glued together with icing make a perfekt crooked tree with a Ginger bread man on top of it.
Since we do not have any tableware in the store, people need to eat out of their hands. Millionaire Shortbread and mini Christmas Guglhupf cakes come in handy here. I also made small Pumpkin Spice cakes that were gone with two bites.
The rest of the cookie dough I used for smaller Christmas Trees or little Hangtags and a very cute Reindeer Cookie featuring, of course, a red nose.
I tried to also make cake buffet signs that look like wooden signs. For the actual black signs I used very dark chocolate cookie dough with red sugar icing and a little white icing for the snow on top of it. The white signs are regular cookie dough flooded with white royal icing. For the booth itself I simply used the one that I created in summer and gave it a little Christmasy look.
For the Chocolate Cake Christmas Tree, I used a new baking mold which appeared to be pretty difficult to handle as the top of the tree is very thin compared to the bottom leading to different baking times. I applied some tin foil to the top for cooling.
To create the Ginger Bread Christmas Tree, I used a special Cookie Mold that I found at Lakeland in the UK. Lot´s of stars in different sizes irregulary glued together with icing make a perfekt crooked tree with a Ginger bread man on top of it.
Since we do not have any tableware in the store, people need to eat out of their hands. Millionaire Shortbread and mini Christmas Guglhupf cakes come in handy here. I also made small Pumpkin Spice cakes that were gone with two bites.
The rest of the cookie dough I used for smaller Christmas Trees or little Hangtags and a very cute Reindeer Cookie featuring, of course, a red nose.
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