Christmas Cooking

While up at mums for Christmas i made some treats for dessert to take for lunch and some for other days.

These cute little reindeer cakes are from my friend Lisa.She in turn got the recipe from the Coles book.

I used chocolate ripple biscuits which I put into a patty cake pan.
Put a spoonful of caramel pie filling on each one.
Melt some chocolate and pour on top of caramel.
Decorate-I cheated -I already had the little eyes at home so I used them.I put a chocolate button on for the face and a jaffa for the nose and pretzels for the antlers.

Next year I am going to pipe out some simple antlers with chocolate and use those.But those still tasted great...

Another thing  I made was taken from  Desire Empire  which is another blog I love and she has has the best recipes .

These were Meringue birds nests with a mascarpone &strawberry coulis- sounds a bit posh but trust me so easy to make.I made these on our last night at mums  and they went down a treat.

I bought my meringues bases at Cole's but at the last minute decided to use pavlova nests.
You need
2 tablespoons of Castor sugar
2 teaspoons of vanilla
1 tub of marscarpone
1 punnet of strawberry's

Cut half the punnet of strawberry's into strips these are for decoration.With the rest of the punnet push through a sieve (I made Kev do this he he he )
Add the sugar and vanilla to the marscarpone and some of the strawberry puree.
Put into the nests.
Decorate the with the remainder of strawberry's and pour a little of the strawberry puree over them.

Eat and enjoy.....We did....

Lastly I got this idea from A collection of thoughts blog one of Tamar's family bought this kit from Cole's called a Meringue Christmas Tree kit.I couldn't get one in Sydney but mum was able to pick it up in Qld.I didn't make it up there but did when we got home for our second Christmas day celebrations.

 

I changed it around a bit and added whip cream in the caps and strawberry's and then I made spun toffee for the top.

 

Now the toffee bit sounds posh but it was quite easy except I put it in the fridge to keep cool. Then Kev noticed it has dissolved in the fridge.So I quickly made up a second lot but this time I forgot about it and burnt it (OMG the smell of burnt sugar yuk) I was going to give up but thought OK one more try.
This time perfect......hey maybe I am either posh or just lucky....ha ha ha