Blogging again, gingerly...

Haha. Planned to post more often this year... eleven months later as I look back, yeahnotsomuch. But moving along: here’s what I got up to, baking-wise, for Christmas. Inspired by ZuckerBaby’s spectacular gingerbread TARDIS, I decided to make a gingerbread house again (following my inaugural effort last year). I followed the same recipe guideline as ZB, over at this excellent e-book, and based my design on the Mountain Retreat pattern PDF there. But like last year, this was to be an Australian (Strayan!) house with no snow to be seen — strictly cocoa-coloured icing to cement the thing together, a textured 'tin' roof, and a bit of a front yard. The grass is quite a bright shade of green (they must have put down some fresh turf, eh?) and I took ZB’s lead and used eucalyptus drops to melt into the windows.

Here’s a view with a torch shining into the windows, and so you can see the less than perfect finish on the roof; I’m claiming that’s where the possums get in.

Also, I made the ‘Christmas cake’ for the family this year, which actually meant one dozen rum raisin cupcakes; I topped them with some little fondant gumleaves (ha, I sound really parochial!:

Oh, and one of the presents I gave to family was a selection of these fabulous fruity, chewy lollies (think soft taffy) from Stillwater Sweets. They’re in Kuranda in northern Queensland, but have an online shop — I can vouch for the deliciousness of their pineapple, mango, lime and strawberry flavours (the four included in the mixed bags) and banana, but they have many more that I look forward to trying one day. They’re even labelled as vegan. Highly recommended!

That’s all for now, but I can see a 2012 photo dump in my near future... P.S. I know the photos are less than ideal — I’m still getting used to my newish camera.