A little like Christmas....

 Our tree is up and decorated with some favourite decorations along with some handmade wreaths around the house. Our little street is looking like a disco with a few of the houses going slightly overboard with outdoor Christmas lights bringing a steady stream of cars crawling up our street.

 Somehow even though we are surrounded by festive Christmas lights and our house is suitably decorated we are somehow not feeling very festive this year. My eldest daughter Amelia commented that I hadn't done any Christmas baking like I normally do each year. So in an effort to make at least my daughters feel a little more festive, yesterday afternoon we decided to make some chocolate peppermint bark. It's an easy recipe to make just a bit of waiting time for each layer to set before adding the next. We started melting chocolate then realised we didn't have any candy canes. A quick trip to the supermarket revealed that they were all sold out so we decided to improvise and make do with what we did have and we came up with triple chocolate peppermint and pistachio bark.

 Not much of a recipe to share but here it is:

1. Melt 200 gms white chocolate with 1/2 tsp peppermint essence and 20 gms kremelta (vegetable shortening) and spread onto base of a lined sponge roll tin. Place in freezer to set.
2. Melt 200 gms milk chocolate with 1/2 tsp peppermint essence and 20 gms kremelta and spread onto set white chocolate layer then sprinkle with chopped pistachios. Place in freezer to set.
3. Melt 100 gms dark chocolate with 1/4 tsp peppermint and 10 gms of kremelta and spread over second layer. Melt 100 gms white chocolate with 1/4 tsp peppermint essence and 10 gms of kremelta and place on dark chocolate then using a skewer marble the two layers together. Finally sprinkle with more chopped pistachios.

Another recipe I usually make each Christmas are these fresh ginger biscuits which I made this afternoon using a variety of Christmas themed cookie cutters. This recipe makes a lot so they are good for giving away ;-)

• 375g softened butter
• 1 3/4 cups brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 tbsp grated fresh ginger
• grated rind of 2 lemons or oranges
• 3 3/4 cups flour
• 2 tblsp ground ginger
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp ground white pepper
• 1/4 ground cloves

1. Beat butter and sugar together until light and creamy. Beat in the egg, grated rind and fresh ginger.
2. Sift together all dry ingredients and stir into creamed mixture until well combined.
3. Roll out the dough to 0.5mm thick and cut out shapes using various cookie cutters.
4. Bake at 180C for 10-12 mins. Cool before storing in an airtight tin.