Book 24 : The Birthday Book - Fiona Cairns

You may be shocked to learn that I get massively overexcited at Christmas time.  This year was slightly worse than usual, as I had Christmas at my house for the first time.  Because of this I had an explosion of Christmas themed cooking going on, I had written huge lists of ingredients, recipe locations and the order that I was going to cook everything. Its probably a good thing I have boarder line OCD because my love of lists has had a brilliant run the last few weeks.  Unfortunately when I say overexcited I'm probably underestimating how over excited I got!  At the last count (it should really read final count because anything I make now isn't Christmas food) I made 12 batches of various biscuits, a Yuletide Log (I snigger a bit every time I say that!!), 2 Gingerbread houses, Chocolate toffee bark, Sugared twists (massive disaster, lets never speak of them again!), Chocolate bon bons (up itself rocky road), a Lemon tart, 2 x White chocolate cheesecakes (delicious!), 2 x Spiced chocolate cakes (will be burning this recipe, it was crap!),  2 x Chocolate Terrines with Mandarin oil and spiced praline and a Girdle buster pie.  See what I mean by over excited?  This is not taking into consideration any of the savoury dishes I completed including baking a 10.5kg ham on the bone (which was magnificent, even if I do say so myself), the 5 batches of vanilla custard ice cream and the best creme anglaise I've ever made!.  The stupid thing about me making all this food isn't the ridiculous variety (what the hell was I thinking!), its that I forgot to put most of it out!  We had 36 people for lunch and 38 for tea and of the four types of shortbread I made, none was consumed because I forgot to put any of it out for people to eat!  I doubled most of the desserts, not thinking that I also allowed 5 roast potatoes per person, probably because even if I stuff myself with potatoes and gravy, if I sit quietly for 10 minutes I can usually fit in two or three servings of dessert (its a special gift!).  Unfortunately this gift seems to have skipped everyone else in my extended family, so I have been left with copious amounts of desserts and no real desire to eat them (slightly over everything by the time I got to it!).  So I've learnt three things this Christmas:

1.  Pick two deserts and kick their arse, don't make 200 different cookies and then forget them!
2.  Whilst the Girdle buster pie is AWESOME!!  People will look at you strangely when you offer it and it makes a huge mess in the freezer when you put it in to set at on a angle! (Chocolaty biscuit base, coffee ice cream and caramel top, so good it makes me want to burst into song)
3.  Make sure your brain filter is firmly in place before responding to your Grandma's request to talk about gardening with "No point Grandma, I don't listen cos I really don't care!", its not her fault she interrupted cheesecake time and she gets slightly upset when she realises your ignoring everything she is saying.

Oh, make that 4! 

4.  Take photos of everything cos you've just spent 2 weeks cooking up a storm and have nothing to put on your blog!... except this :)

Recipe - Cinnamon-Orange Gingerbread Cottage

700g plain flour, plus more to dust
4 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp bicarb soda
250g salted butter, very slightly softened and diced
3 egg yolks
200g light muscovado sugar (I used golden caster sugar)
6 tbsp golden sugar
finely grated zest of 1 orange

-  Sift the flour, spices and bicarb of soda into a large bowl and add the butter.  Rub together with your fingertips - or tip into a food processor and blend - until mixture resembles fine crumbs.
-  Add the eggs yolks, sugar, syrup and orange zest and mix until the dough comes together.  If its too sticky, add a little more flour.
-  Wrap in cling film and chill for at least an hour to rest the dough.  Line two or three baking trays with baking paper.
-  Divide the dough in half.  Roll out one half on a well-floured surface into a large rectangle about 5mm thick.  (If you roll it out between to large sheets on baking paper it doesn't make a mess and doesn't dry out with the extra flour!)  Cut out desired shape.
-  Re-roll any offcuts with the remaining dough  and use until desired shapes all cut (this makes a triangle house but make what ever shape you want, we cheated and made it with house shape cutters!)
-  Cut out any doors, chimneys etc and rest in the fridge for half an hour.  Preheat the oven to 180c.  Bake in batches for 15-20 minutes.  Retrim straight away as the dough may have spread a bit.

Assemble this house with what ever lollies etc you want, along with royal icing or chocolate... (yell out if you need the recipe for royal icing).

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I may have mentioned before that I go through phases?  Well if not, I tend to go through phases, buying birthday cake books was one.  This book was purchased in the middle of that phase (I'm now over cake books.. and cakes) and the only reason I have included it in this blog is because as I said above I forgot to take photos of the other recipes.  But saying that its a good cake book, lots of interesting cakes.. but as I said I'm so sick of birthday cakes, that the next time someone asks me to make one for them there is a good chance I'll spit on them (that's so not true, I would never intentionally spit on anyone, probably a good thing I don't drink often, because I'm pretty sure then I become a unintentional sprinkler!)  anyway (after that slightly awkward rant), on to the recipe!

This is a great gingerbread recipe!  Its really tasty, although I would add extra cinnamon and orange zest.  Also when rolling out the dough, do it between two sheets of baking paper, your dough wont dry out and it makes less mess.  I haven't given you the decorating details, mainly because you can figure that out for yourself and also because I'm lazy :P.  I made two small houses with the above dough that I had the kids decorate, which was awesome fun although more lollies got eaten than made it to the houses..  I also have it on very good authority that Charli's house may have been licked whilst my back was turned :).  My theory with licking whilst cooking is if I don't see it (or no-one saw me), it didn't happen!  Doesn't that just encourage you to eat my short bread?? :) 

Thanks
Kate
xx