Edible presents for teachers

We do presents for teachers at Christmas. I don't like doing the same as everyone else so we normally make things. This year, I decided to put together a number of edible presents as I'm normally making some for family.

I started in September by doing some damson vodka. I had some damsons in my freezer which I'd been given by a friend about a year ago so decided I needed to do something. I googled around and hit on a recipe that meant I could fill large Le Parfait jars. The third one was a bit light on damsons so I added a vanilla pod. It was basically a bottle of vodka, sugar (anywhere between 170g and 350g was mentioned so I went for about 250g) and 1lb damsons in sterilised jars then hid them in my airing cupboard - where it is dark and warm. I turned the jars over daily until the sugar dissolved and tasted it after a month to check if it was sweet enough. Then I bottled it earlier in the week using kitchen roll to filter out any bits. Bottling was actually the hardest thing, because I bought swing top bottles and fitting the tops turned out to be an art form!

Then in late October, I made some baked bean tin Christmas cakes - lining the tins took us ages! They've been maturing in tins ever since and earlier this week, I marzipanned and covered 4 fully in sugar paste, marzipanned and sugar pasted the tops of another 5, and 3 were baked with an almond decoration. The children did their own design on the tops - Monkey did a Christmas tree with green sugarpaste for his teacher, Missy Woo did stars which I sprayed gold before sticking on. We wrapped a couple of extra cakes for teaching assistants too.

Next, in November, I made some sweet chilli jam. It's quite hot, so I hope it doesn't blow the teachers' heads off!

Then, yesterday, I made some mini mince pies from this recipe so I didn't have to roll out any pastry - everything just got pushed into place with finger and a tart shaper, then I pressed out the rest of the dough and cut out stars for the tops.

I know this all sounds like a lot of faff but everything has been fitted in around everything else. The longest job was lining the cake tins - next year, I have my eye on a mini sandwich tin to cook them all together although I guess I will still need to line them!


Do you make edible presents? What do you like to make?

Yes, it's November so I can mention the C word!

I made Christmas cakes on Sunday. Yes, cakes. I'm not really a domestic goddess, I made baked bean tin Christmas cakes from this post by Jules. Actually, it was a bit of a long process. First, I bought the fruit and started soaking it a couple of weeks ago, in brandy.

We also had to eat our way through 12 little baked bean tins. The children enjoyed this challenge, discovering new flavours of pasta and beans with sausages, but not Dora the Explorer pasta. I'm not daft, it would cost me a fortune as small tins of beans and pasta seem to cost approximately twice as much as large tins.

Once washed out and all the ingredients purchased, I set aside Sunday afternoon to do this. Jules warns in her post that lining the tins is fiddly and boy, she is not wrong. I started at about half past two and even with Missy Woo "helping" me, I didn't finish lining the tins until 4.45 - at which point, I thought I had better make tea for everyone then get on with the actual mixing and baking. (Do as Jules says if you do this - buy paperclips to hold the paper in place, it really helps.

The recipe is quite generous in amounts. That or I've got small tins! I tried not to overload the tins but went back round to fill them nicely. And finally, just before the Strictly dance-off, the tins finally reached the oven. Interestingly, the cake mixture rises quite a bit - which surprised me as the flour is plain and there is no baking powder added either, so it must be the eggs or something. I placed whole almonds on the top of a few cakes before I put the cakes in the oven, so that they can be left plain as not everyone likes marzipan and icing.

Once cooked, I left them to cool and they were still warm at midnight. I was therefore removing them from tins at 1am, before putting them into storage boxes. These are being saved for Christmas presents, some for teachers, some for family and I'll get the kids to help me decorate them.

Also, on the theme of Christmas preparations, I have damson vodka hiding in the airing cupboard, and some recipes ready to hand to make in the run up to Christmas. And yes, I've bought some presents with some to buy but that's boring. I like making Christmas presents for people to eat.

How about you?

Of trains and racing cars

We were very excited when we were invited to an event organised by Scalextric last Friday. The timing was perfect - just at the end of half term when you're running out of things to do. The trip to London meant a trip on the train - and although the children have been on trains before, they have never been on the fast trains that run down to London from here. When I told them where we were going, they were giddy with the anticipation of it all.

And who doesn't love Scalextric? As a girl from a family of girls, I was always a tad jealous of friends who had brothers as they would have some Scalextric to play with. Husband was pretty happy too, as he loved Scalextric as a child and more to the point, he'd got holiday booked which meant he could come along to his first blogger event.

A day trip to London means an early start from here so we were all up for 6. Actually, Monkey wasn't so my husband took great delight in waking him up - a small revenge for some of the early starts he's put him through! The sun rose as we reached Preston station and waited for our "London train" to arrive. We got on and found our seats - thankfully, a table of 4 to one end of a carriage. Monkey's eyes were wide as he took it all in and noticed how fast the train was going, even as we left the station. However, the novelty soon wore off, he got into playing on his DS and barely noticed a thing the rest of the way! Typical.