I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and enjoyed my attempt at #BLOGMAS. It was surprisingly harder than I expected to get all the posts up and on time. But I really did enjoy posting so frequently. For now, I'm going back to posting every Tuesday and Thursday, with the occassional posts on Sunday!

This year I got some really good presents and I wanted to share a few of them with you as you may be able to pick a few up in the sales.

I know it's silly but I always like getting things like slippers, pyjamas, socks, etc. So when I opened these I was glad that I got a good pair of slippers. These are from Tesco and they're really comfortable. I also love how cute they are, when I was at school I used to love the Me to You bears. 

How adorable are these socks?! They're from New Look and I thought they were so cute. I do like patterned and bold socks so I was glad to get these

My two little cousins know that I love Lush. So they each choose a soap from Lush that I may like and they both did a pretty good job. They smell so refreshing and citrussy and I really can't wait to use them. I haven't used a lush soap in such a long time so I'm excited to use these again!

Finally, a present I actually knew I was getting as I got my parents to buy this when it was 20% off on Black Friday. I am soooo in love with this set. I had no idea the packaging would be so luxurious. I haven't yet worn the eyeshadows but I've swatched them and they are incredibly pigmented. I'm going to do a post on each of the palettes as you're still able to buy them individually and I think they each deserve their praise! 

So they're the main presents that I wanted to share with you. I hope that you all got what you wished for and I'd love to hear what you did get! 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I used a recipe from a book I borrowed called Homemade Edible Treats.. but unfortunately I can't remember the authors name. If I find it, I'll update this post as soon as! 

Ingredients:

175ml Golden Syrup

115g butter, softened

115g soft brown sugar,

600g plain flour

4tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp mixed spice (I added this for extra flavour)

1tsp ground cinnamon

4tsp bicarbonate soda, dissolved in 4tsp of cold water

2 large egg yolks

1) Melt the butter, golden syrup and brown sugar in a pan until liquefied. 

2) Mix all the dry ingredients together, ensure it's sifted to make it easier to mix. 

3) Then mix the bicarbonate of soda mixture with two egg yolks and add to the melted butter and sugar mixture. Stir it in and you will notice the mixture begin to froth up and almost double in size

4) Make a well in the dry ingredients and add in the wet mixture. Fold it in until thoroughly mixed. It will begin to combine together and form a slightly dry dough. Begin to kneed with your hands and you will get a dough-like consistency like below. 

You are all probably aware of my Advent Calendar of presents by now. But if you're not, I made one for my boyfriend for his Christmas present. Choosing a few main presents is a tough job so I thought I'd give him a bunch of fun gifts instead. Plus it's always nice to have more presents to open! If you want to see what else I got, check out the 1st, 2nd and 3rd series. The final series will go live on Christmas Day..

I thought I'd try and get creative for the festive period and make some canapés. I made these all in one morning and even though they weren't the hardest thing to make, I'd definitely practice before your big night. I found the three recipes online.

Baked Camembert with Bacon wrapped breadsticks - Good Foods

I used a dough hook to kneed the dough (because I'm lazy) but it was quicker and did a better job than I could have. I then let it to prove for about an hour before creating the main shape. I used the lid of the Camembert to create a ring shape and then snipped out the breadsticks around the ring. I then pulled at these slightly and intertwined pieces of parma ham in each one. 

Brush this with Olive oil and let it bake in the oven for 15 minutes at 190C before adding in the Camembert in the middle. This has a little olive oil and rosemary sprigs added in for extra flavour. You want this to cook enough to melt the cheese to a thick liquid, so it only really needs an extra 10 minutes in the oven. 

Ultimate Sausage Puffs - Delicious Magazine

For a full list of ingredients, check the original site.

Instead of using sausage meat I decided to mash up actual sausages and I cooked these slightly before mixing them in with the other ingredients. I wanted to make sure they were cooked thoroughly in the oven without having to bake them so long. If you are going to do it this way, I'd recommend patting the sausage meat dry a little to absorb the oil and prevent it from leaking into the pastry. 

Add a small slice of parma ham and wrap these into a square of puff pastry. It's best to flatten the meat ball slightly but always ensure that there's enough puff pastry to cover the entire meatball. You can see that mine have split a bit where I didn't roll out enough pastry, I managed to rescue these slightly by patching them up with small bits of pastry. These need to bake for around 25-30 minutes at 200C (maybe a bit less if you precooked the sausagemeat).

Cranberry Camembert Puffs - Tesco Real Food

I forgot to get pictures of this stage as I was in quite a rush. But the final canapé is a really easy one! All you need is to cut small squares of shortcrust pastry and bake for about 10 minutes at 200C. Then add a small chunk of camembert and let this melt in the oven for about 5-8mins. When serving, add a cranberry sauce that is made from balsamic vinegar, onions and cranberries (or you can use cranberry sauce like me). This is a super quick and easy recipe.