After years and years of spending Christmas in Korea, this year I shall be going home for Christmas. But with that comes a whole host of questions of what I would like for Christmas. We will be spending the day with my family, then heading over to Ireland to spend some time with Niall’s family. Obviously my own friends and family know me well and what I might like but with in-laws it’s really hard not to know what to get. To make things easier, Niall and I decided to make wish lists on Amazon with lots of little things we both liked to help make present buying a lot easier. I have really taken to this making a wish list thing, so much so I thought I would make a fat girls wish list. This is a collection of lovely things I would love to own one day. Obviously Le Creuset pans and Cath Kidston dishes are probably a bit beyond my means at the moment, but there are lots of lovely thing like ingredients and bake-ware that I could afford but never seem to buy. I figured I would share it with all my lovely readers, since it is the season of giving and perhaps some of you are rich, generous or want to buy your favourite food blogger a lovely present (wink,wink). So here is my list of lovely things if you would like to check it out. Happy Christmas shopping everyone! #buymepresentsplease.

It’s Christmas Eve and I though there’s just about enough time to squeeze in one more little post before I take  my Christmas break (to be fair I need to get something out of being at work today!) Yes, whilst everyone and their dog is at home enjoying Christmas merriment I’m at work, although it is the Christmas party today so it could be worse. I’m not actually a lover of gingerbread, but I thought I would make a gingerbread house for my students anyway. It wasn’t actually too hard and it really got me in the Christmas spirit. My decorating could certainly be improved upon but overall I’m quite happy with it. Niall actually made all the templates for the house but there are plenty of templates online that you can just print out if you don’t have handy and helpful boyfriend.

Ingredients

Gingerbread

800g of all-purpose  flour (I used the one for noodles and dumplings)

275g of dark brown sugar

200g of molasses

128g of butter

1 tablespoon of cinnamon

1 tablespoon of ginger (I used the powder that you can buy in packets everywhere)

1/2 teaspoon of salt

280ml of milk

1 tablespoon of baking powder

Royal Icing Using Egg Whites

2 large (60 grams) egg whites

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

3 cups (330 grams) confectioners (powdered or icing) sugar, sifted

Directions

Combine brown sugar, molasses, butter, spices, and salt in a saucepan over low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon, until sugar is dissolved. This will take about 10 minutes. Stir in the milk and remove the mixture from the heat. In a large bowl mix the flour and baking powder then pour in the sugar mixture and combine to make the dough. Split the dough in to four pieces then wrap in clingfilm and leave in the fridge overnight.

Take the pieces out of the refrigerator and roll out on a floured surface, this will be quite hard to start with but it gets easier, just keep turning them as you work. Once your you dough is about 1/4 of an inch thick you can put your template on top and cut out the pieces. bake in an oven at 170 degrees Celcius for about 15-20 minutes or until they are browned and thoroughly cooked through.

When all of the pieces have been cooked they are ready to be assembled. I decided to use royal icing to stick mine together and this worked well, but you may wish to use sugar caramel instead. Make sure the royal icing is really thick, then apply liberally all down the edges and stick the pieces together. I made the main frame first then let it dry before adding the roof.

To make the royal icing, beat the egg whites with the lemon juice until they have quadrupled in volume. Add the sifted sugar and beat on low speed until smooth. If necessary, to get the right consistency, add more sugar or water. Add food coloring, if desired. You will need to split your icing into several different containers and add all the different colors you are planning to use. The icing needs to be used immediately or put in an airtight container as it hardens when exposed to air.

Decorate with more royal icing and as much candy as you like. Allow to dry thoroughly before diving in. Merry Christmas one and all.

There is nothing more I love more than a Champagne cocktail. Christmas is a time to celebrate and I like to do that by drinking copious amounts of alcohol! Now I like to think of myself as a very classy lady, only the finest cocktails for me and on those very special occasions I really like to up the ante and splash out on a bit of bubbly. I’ve been drinking Kir Royals for many years now since the queen of class Mrs. Suzy Potter née Marson introduced me to them many years ago.

If you like these as much as I do then you may not be able to use real champagne every time but since you have the added crème de cassis there’s nothing wrong with using sparkling wine instead. Like I always say, there’s nought wrong with a bit of Asti Spumante. I even decided to treat myself to some champagne glasses this year, Daiso’s finest at 3,000 a glass. Sadly I only bought  two, so we will have to celebrate two at a time in my house.

Ingredients

1 Bottle of Champagne (or the best you can afford)

1-2 tablespoons of Crème de cassis (I found mine in a a bottle shop in Dongdaemun)

Directions

Open your bubbly and pour into a glass (preferably a champagne glass.) Top with the creme de cassis and enjoy. Repeat until you feel like a very classy lady or until the Champagne bottle is empty.

‘Tis the season to be jolly, tra la la la la la la la la! Usually the most effective way to make me jolly, is to ply me with booze. So with that in mind, I though it was time to get stuck into the Christmas spirit quite literally and get some Christmas themed booze down my neck as soon as humanly possible. What’s more festive than a glass or 5 of mulled wine? Sourcing the ingredients for mulled wine can be a little tricky if you didn’t bring any from home, but it is certainly possible. The main thing is to get the wine, sugar, and oranges. Then just use whatever spices you can get hold of. They have quite a good selection in the foreign food mart in Itaewon. But various things can be found at Home-plus and E mart so don’t worry if you don’t have everything, just use whatever you can find. The wine is the main feature here.

Ingredients

2 bottles of red wine (nothing fancy here, time to break out the Carlo Rossi)

200g of white sugar

2 oranges

1 lemon

2 cinnamon sticks (Pinoy Mart, foreign food mart)

8 cloves (found at Bangsan market)

2 star anise (foreign food mart)

1 teaspoon of mixed all spice

1/2 teaspoon of Nutmeg

Directions

Pour a glass or two of wine into the saucepan along with the sugar and spices. Bring to boil for about 5- 10 minutes until it has thickened and formed a syrup. Once it has become syrupy, add the rest of the wine and continue to heat until it is simmering. Once it is simmering, reduce the heat to very low. Pour your wine into a glass and enjoy. Repeat until cheeks are rosy and you are full of festive joy and cheer. Merry Christmas!

So winter is here and so are the holidays. To me that means large joints of meat. Now is the time splash out on ingredients we wouldn’t usually buy. At a Thanksgiving dinner a few weeks ago we were served up some amazing belly pork, cooked by my talented friend James. It was so good, that I immediately sent Niall out into to the cold to buy some as soon as we got home. This glorious piece of meat is for sale in Costco (I have included the label below). Be warned though its not for the faint hearted, this slab of frozen meat was a a whopping 3.7kg but priced at only 22,000(that was the smallest one)! Luckily it just about fit in my freezer. Last weekend I defrosted it and then cut it into 2 large pieces so it was able to fit in my oven. This would make a great christmas day alternative if you cant find a turkey or just if you really love pork.

Ingredients

2kg of belly pork

1 large onion

7 cloves of garlic

1 apple

Salt and pepper for rubbing

Directions

Thaw you meat thoroughly over night. When you wake in the morning cut the piece into two or three unless you have a giant oven (In which case I hate you!) Wrap up the unused pieces and put into the fridge or give to a friend (eg: me). Slice your onion and apple, then roughly chop your garlic. Then put them into the bottom of your roasting tray. If you have any fresh herbs you could put them on too,  mine all died in the snow though Score lines in the fat then rub on the salt and pepper.

Put into an oven at 140 degrees Celsius uncovered for about an hour, this helps the skin get crispy. Then loosely cover with foil and cook for another 4-6 hours. All the fat  juices will collect at the boom of the pan so make sure to pour them off into a jug to save for later. You should also baste about once an hour. This was very easy for me as my oven only cooks for an hour at a time.  After about two hours you may wish to remove your onions and garlic if you are hoping to use them later for your gravy. Other wise they will burn to a crisp.

Once the pork has been fully roasted remove from the oven and leave to rest for at least an hour, loosely covered in foil. Then slice your delicious meat. You can serve exactly how it is or cover the slices in a beautiful apple gravy.  I made mine with the onions, garlic and apple from the roasting pan, the juice from the pork, a little red wine, and a bit of bisto for good measure. Pour over the slices to keep them soft and tender. If you’re not using it straight away this is the best method of storage. Be sure to keep your fat for roasting the potatoes, no one minds a bit of cholesterol at Christmas. Voilà there you have the best roast dinner ever!

Advent is upon us and it’s time to get that holiday cheer. I am a huge fan of all things Christmassy and to get myself in the mood I decided to make some Christmas cookies. I was really excited about all the festive things I would be able to make. I ventured off to the baking mart in Dongdaemun to stock up on all the things I would need to create my wonderful winter snacks. There were cutters and decorations galore. I bought plenty of food colouring to make my iced treats and watched a few tutorials about how to make royal icing and flood icing to decorate them.

Since my baking experiments had been going so well lately, I think I overestimated my talents. Although I think my cooking usually tastes pretty damn good, my fall down is always my presentation. In my head I imagined creating something beautiful like these.

Sadly mine came out more like this. 

My basic icing layer was fine but my decorating was poor at best. I really should have put them in the fridge and left them till the next day when I would have had more energy to decorate them rather than half assing it. It’s about now that I really wish I had some children so I could palm off my poor skills on them. Mine look as though they were made by a 5  year old. In the end they still tasted really nice, better than I thought actually. I’m not usually a fan of plain biscuits, but these were great.  And I still have half the dough left over in the freezer so I shall have another go and see if I can do any better. The recipe for the cookies and the icing comes from the Joy of Baking. So I can’t actually claim any kind of creative talent on these whatsoever. 

Ingredients 

Sugar Cookies

3 cups (390 grams) all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup (227 grams) butter

1 cup (200 grams) white sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Royal Icing Using Egg Whites

2 large (60 grams) egg whites

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

3 cups (330 grams) confectioners (powdered or icing) sugar, sifted

Directions

 In a bowl whisk together the flour, salt, and baking soda. In a second bowl,  beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy (about 3 minutes). Add the eggs and vanilla extract and beat until combined. Add the flour mixture and beat until you have a smooth dough. Divide the dough in half and wrap each half in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for about one hour or until firm enough to roll.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and place rack in centre of oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or just butter them up. 

Remove one half of the chilled dough from the refrigerator and, on a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to a thickness of 1/4 inch (1 cm). (Keep turning the dough as you roll, making sure the dough does not stick to the counter.)  Cut out desired shapes using a lightly floured cookie cutter and transfer cookies to baking sheet. Place the baking sheets with the unbaked cookies in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes to chill the dough which prevents the cookies from spreading and losing their shape while baking. Note: If you are not going to frost the baked cookies, you can sprinkle the unbaked cookies with sparkling sugar. 

Bake cookies for about 8-10 minutes (depending on size) or until the edges are just starting to brown. Remove from oven and let cookies cool on baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling. Frost with royal icing, if desired. Be sure to let the royal icing dry completely before storing. (This may take several hours or overnight.)

To make the royal icing, beat the egg whites with the lemon juice until they have quadrupled in volume. Add the sifted sugar and beat on low speed until smooth. If necessary, to get the right consistency, add more sugar or water. Add food coloring, if desired. You will need to split your icing into several different contains and add all the different colors you are planning to use. The icing needs to be used immediately or put in an airtight container as it hardens when exposed to air.

Pipe a line of icing around the outside of your cookie and allow it to set. Thin the icing a little while you are waiting for it to dry then apply a second coating in the middle of your cookie. This should be runnier and hence why it is called flood icing. If you are wanting to make cookies like me then you can just throw on the decorations at this point and allow them to set. If you are looking to make a more professional batch then allow them to set once again before decorating them with different colours of piped royal icing.

There are plenty of sites out there, for those of you more creatively abled than I. But hopefully I have given you some ideas and got you into the Christmas spirit a little. Merry Christmas!

So, as Thanksgiving and Christmas are approaching it’s time to start making those holiday recipes. For all you lazy ducks out there, they currently have cranberry jelly/ sauce in the Foreign Food Mart in Itaewon . So get your ass down there fast. This is the fist year I have ever seen it, although I have been making my own for the past three years. You can use dried or frozen cranberries. Frozen ones are sold at Homeplus, and Emart, and the dried Ocean Spray ones are at Costco, and the Foreign Food Mart.

The cranberry jelly is a lot like jam, and it lasts incredibly well. I usually make a batch for Thanksgiving, although I am not American, I am more than willing to celebrate any occasion that involves food. Then if there is plenty of  it left over I have it all ready for Christmas.

We were hoping to go to Ireland this year but we have to work on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, which made it a no-go for us. Before you feel too sorry for us though, we shall be jetting off to Hong Kong on the 27th to celebrate New Years Eve.  So, all of my friend that are not going anywhere for Christmas should count themselves very lucky that I shall be here to cook them a lovely Christmas dinner. I might even stretch to a turkey this year.

Ingredients

300g dried cranberries (you can also use the frozen ones from Homeplus)v

600ml of orange juice

1 orange (zest, and fruit)

8 tablespoons of sugar

1 glass of red wine (optional)

Directions 

Put the cranberries in a saucepan then add the orange juice , and sugar, and bring to the boil. Pu the orange zest, and orange segments into the saucepan. Pour in the wine, and continue to simmer on a low to medium heat for 30-40 minutes. Or until the liquid has reduced and the sauce has thickened. When the sauce is done put into a container and leave to set in the fridge for a few hours. The jelly will keep in an airtight container for several months, if you don’t use it all. Voilà, home-made cranberry sauce. Happy Holidays!