Dairy-Free Baileys

A repeat of last year's present to me good friend and camera assistant, Niamh, this year I have made another improved batch of dairy-free Baileys; a cream liqueur made with whiskey.

I have a lot of friends, family members, and acquaintances who have varying degrees of food intolerances and sensitivities, which is how I got into this kind of alternative cooking in the first place. Of all the sensitivities, however, I've found dairy the hardest to emulate.

I love dairy: milk, cream, butter, ice-cream, chocolate, toffees and fudges and all sorts are my favourites, and having a mug of hot chocolate before bedtime is part of my typical night time routine. My brother has a Pakistani friend, who tells him that many good stories of revelry in Pakistan begin with "We bought a load of ice-cream", the same way that Irish stories begin with "We bought a load of beer", and these are the kinda stories that I need more of in my life. As such, I find that dairy-free things just lack something: they lack that richness and sweetness that is associated with cow dairy products.

However, a close second to cow milk is coconut milk: it's rich, sweet, and creamy. Even though it's not the same, it's nice in its own way. This is what I use generally when I replace cow milk; although, I have heard that oat milk is an even better mimic of cow milk.

So, to make a dairy-free Baileys, I reached for some coconut milk. It turned out very well; a good second best to real Baileys.

FREE FROM

☑ Soya (check for soya lecithin)
☑ Dairy (use substitute in italics for dairy free)
☑ Gluten
☑ Nuts

CONTAINS
☒ Refined sugar products

INGREDIMENTS:

• One 14 fluid ounce can (400 millilitres) of full fat coconut milk
• One 14 fluid ounce can (400 millilitres) of light coconut milk
• 2 to 4 tablespoons (30 to 60 millilitres) light brown sugar, to taste
• 1 teaspoon (5 millilitres) cocoa powder
• ½ teaspoon (3 millilitres) instant coffee powder
• Two pinches of ground cinnamon
• A pinch of ground nutmeg
• 3 to 5 shots (105 to 175 millilitres) Irish Whiskey, to taste

HOW-TO:

• In a large saucepan, heat the two coconut milks together, stirring, until smooth. Heat until gently steaming.
• In a glass, mix the cocoa powder and about 1 tablespoon (15 millilitres) of the heated milk together to a paste. Add this to the rest of the milk. This makes sure the cocoa powder dissolves properly.
• Stir in the coffee powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg, then start adding the sugar a tablespoon at a time. Once the mixture is sweet enough, remove from the heat.
• Add in the whiskey, one shot at a time, until it's the right strength for you. I know my friend likes strong liqueurs, so I added in a good bit of Whiskey.
• Allow to cool before bottling in a 35 fluid ounce (1 litre) glass bottle

Good quality Irish whiskey is expensive, so this is a very special present. If you only want to use a little whiskey, you can spike only half the mixture and keep the other half for making nice coconut hot chocolate.

Sweetie Pie's Top Baking Project Suggestions for Christmas

Last year, I got so busy around Christmas time that I ended up back dating all my Christmas cooking blog posts. I felt rather silly about it, so this year I thought I'd write up a nice list of all the Christmas themed things I've done in years gone by. After all, Sweetie Pie Bakes Stuff is looking at its third year running!

Here is my selection of 15 things to try this Christmas season (mostly gingerbread themed):

1. Traditional Christmas Cake
Moist, rich, dark fruit cake spiked with golden rum and flavoured with aromatic spices and Indian black tea.








2. Gingerbread House: Part I and Part II
Go German style with an ornately decorated gingerbread house. These two posts include the designing, recipe, cooking instructions, and assembly guidelines.








3. Gingerbread Stars (Egg and Wheat Free)
Little eggless gingerbread stars (or any shape you like) decorated with royal icing.




4. Chocolate Dipped Gingerbread Teddies (Wheat Free)
For that extra special gingerbread delight, shape it like a polar bear and dip it in white chocolate; because nothing says Christmas more than eating an tiny version of a giant carnivore.

5. Gluten-, Dairy-, Yeast-, Egg Free Gingerbread

For those who are vegan or intolerant to basically everything used to make gingerbread, here is a version for you.







6. Kołaczki Mince Pies (Wheat Free)
For those of you who like mince pies, but hate the effort of making them traditionally in a muffin tin, these are made in Polish style as little fold-overs.

7. Ginger Ale (No Brewing Required)

I always associate Christmas with a nice glass of ginger ale, and so should you. Have a glass of homemade and particularly fiery ale with your dinner for a proper Christmas experience.







8. Fairy Cakes with Buttercream (Gluten-, Dairy-, and Egg Free)
For those who are vegan or intolerant to basically everything used to make cakes. Vanilla and chocolate cakes topped off with dairy-free buttercream swirls.




9. Vanilla Fondant Fancies (Wheat Free; Dairy Substitute)
Little fluffsome and dainty morsels of sponge cake, filled with buttercream and glazed in glacé icing, if rich dark fruit cake doesn't take your fancy (see what I did there).

10. Ginger Nut Biscuits (Wheat Free)
Sweet and spicy little biscuits made with mixed spices and golden syrup, that can be chewy or crunchy to your liking.

11. Viennese Whirls (Wheat Free)
Melt in the mouth buttery biscuits, like those Danish butter cookies you get from your relatives every year only nicer.







12. Chocolate Truffle Box: Dark Raspberry and Milk Orange
Moulded dark and milk chocolates with a truffle and fruit jam filling.








13. Vanilla Fudge
Rich and creamy homemade fudge that can be flavoured and decorated however you like.

14. Neapolitan Coconut Ice
Traditionally boiled coconut ice with a white, pink, and chocolate layer.

15. Chewy Caramel
Rich, buttery, and tooth destroying caramels, fit for the season.






I hope this list will serve you well over the next few weeks! Be sure to keep an eye on my upcoming 2015 Christmas creations...

Christmas Pudding (Wheat- and Dairy Free), with Pressure Cooker Instructions

There's nothing I love more than good aul' traditional Christmas cooking: I love the meats, Paxo stuffing, and various incarnations of cooked potato that make up the dinner; I love mince pies, whether made in traditional or Polish style; and most of all, I love Christmas cake and pudding.

The difficulty of writing a blog about how to make Christmas pudding is that you can't unveil it until Christmas. As such, ye'll have to wait for photos; but ye all know what a Christmas pudding looks like anyway ^_^

PHOTOS!!

  

 My mother and I both have a wheat sensitivity, which is how I got into wheat-free cookery at all. My sensitivity comes and goes, but my mother's is permanent. This means she can't eat shop-bought traditional Christmas treats, and I've never once seen a wheat-free cake, pudding, or mince pie on sale ever. So for me, having the knowledge of how to do it myself makes this time of year incredibly busy...

Two key ingredients in a traditional Christmas pudding are suet and breadcrumbs. The tricky part of making a wheat-free Christmas pudding from scratch is trying to find suet that isn't dusted in wheat flour, and also trying to find something to use in place of breadcrumbs. Now the breadcrumbs is an easy swap, like I did in my treacle tarts recipe, by replacing it with ground almonds, but if there's still wheat flour in the suet all is lost. I did, luckily, find a way around this: I used block lard and grated it.

However, when one of your brothers is a vegetarian, you can't use normal lard, which is made of beef fat, you have to use vegetable lard. I found some eventually by scouring the fridges at my local supermarket. For those of you who don't know it by that name, it's basically a block of hard white vegetable fat; it's not soft like shortening.

FREE FROM

☑ Soya (check for soya lecithin)
☑ Yeast
☑ Wheat

CONTAINS
☒ Dairy (use substitute in italics for dairy free)
☒ Gluten
☒ Nuts
☒ Eggs
☒ Refined sugar products

INGREDIMENTS:

• 1 pound (455 grammes) mixed dried fruit of your choice: currants, raisins, sultanas, candied peel, prunes (chopped), glacé cherries (chopped and thoroughly rinsed), dried cranberries, etc.
• 1 medium cooking apple, peeled, cored, and grated
• 1 shot (42 millilitres) spiced rum, or whiskey
• 6½ fluid ounces (185 millilitres) hot black tea, or stout for the adventurous
• 2 medium eggs
• 4 ounces (115 grammes) ground almonds
• ½ teaspoon (3 millilitres) ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon (3 millilitres) grated nutmeg
• ½ teaspoon (3 millilitres) ground ginger
• 4 ounces (115 grammes) vegetable fat in a block
• 2 tablespoons (30 millilitres) plain white spelt flour, or gluten free flour
• 4 ounces (115 grammes) light brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons (30 millilitres) treacle
• Grated zest of half a lemon
• Grated zest of half an orange

HOW-TO:

• In a large glass bowl, put the dried fruit, grated apple, hot tea (or stout), and rum (or whiskey) and allow to soak overnight, covered with a tea towel.
• The next day, put the flour and spices into a small bowl, and mix until combined. Grate in the block vegetable fat, tossing the shreds in the flour mixture with a fork between each run down the grater. This stops it from clumping together in a big mess.
• Beat the eggs one at a time into the soaked fruit, then add in the remaining ingredients, mixing well between ingredients, and making sure to add the flour and fat mixture last.
• Prepare a 2 pint (1 litre) pudding basin by greasing it well with butter or margarine, then pour in the mixture, smoothing out the top. Cut out a circle of greaseproof paper to cover the surface of the pudding, then put the basin's lid on.
• If the basin doesn't have a lid, get a piece of foil big enough to cover the top of the pudding basin. Fold a pleat in the middle, and then cover the basin, making sure the pleat ends up across the middle. Secure with twine, and make a twine handle to lift the pudding in and out of the steamer.
• Follow one of the cooking techniques below. Once fully cooked, remove from the heat and take off the lid (or foil covering). Replace the greaseproof paper cover with a fresh one, then put the lid back on, or cover with foil. Wrap the whole basin in cling film or foil, and leave in a cool dark place until Christmas.

To cook in a saucepan,

• Put a trivet or upturned saucer into the bottom of a very large saucepan. Lower the pudding basin into the pan, sit it on the saucer or trivet, and then fill the pan with boiling water to halfway up the side of the basin. Cover the pan, put on a high heat, and bring to the boil. 
• Once boiling, reduce the temperature to medium to maintain a steady but gentle boil, and steam the pudding for 5 hours.
• After 5 hours, remove the basin from the pan and uncover to check the doneness of the pudding: press the surface of the pudding with your finger, and it should spring back like a sponge. To test with a cocktail stick, stick it into the centre of the pudding, and if it comes out with a few sticky crumbs clinging to it, it's fully cooked.
• If it's not fully cooked, return to the pan and cook for a further 30 minutes.

To cook in a pressure cooker,

• Once you have filled the pot with boiling water as instructed above, cover and lock the lid, bring to full pressure, then reduce the heat to medium-low and steam for an hour.
• After an hour, release the pressure either naturally or with the steam valve. Check the doneness as above. If it needs a bit longer, cover and lock the pan and bring to full pressure once more, then cook for a further 10 to 15 minutes before checking again.

This pudding goes very well with custard, or with whipped cream; if you're feeling particularly adventurous, you could even have vanilla ice-cream. I've never been an eater of brandy cream, but I'm sure that'd also be nice.

Happee Birthdaee, Daddee: Coffee and Vanilla Gâteau (Wheat Free, with a Dairy Free Option)

The 16th was my father's birthday, but his celebrations were a little late this year because he and Mum went away to Kerry for a little birthday holiday. We all gathered yesterday instead to enjoy a Sunday lunch, and celebratory cake: coffee and vanilla cake.

I will admit, when you've been the primary birthday cake baker for over 10 years (which is over 50 cakes) you start to run out of ideas. For a few years I experimented with novelty cakes, making them funny shapes or giving them themed decorations, but after a while I realised I prefered good old traditional gateau style cakes.

The members of my family always want the same kind of cake, too: my mother an orange or lemon cake; my oldest brother a coffee cake; my older brother a chocolatey chocolate cake with chocolate on top; my father also coffee cake (or sometimes the very vague request of 'brown cake'); and my sister cheesecake. This year having a (now ex-)boyfriend to make a cake for was very refreshing, especially seeing as his favourite cake was Battenberg, which was a challenge I relished.

These very predictable requests make things quite, well, boring after a while. Usually now though I try and shake things up my adding in an extra flavour. For example, my oldest brother's usual coffee cake became an orange mocha cake, and my mother's usual lemon drizzle cake became a zingy lemon layer cake with lemon infused white chocolate icing. Needless to say, I have become very good at making layer cakes.

The unfortunate thing about this time of year in this country, is that is gets impractically cold in the kitchen: things curdle, split, and set too quickly if you haven't had the central heating on for the weeks (or months) before making the cake. That is what sadly made this cake so hard to make.

I went with the usual coffee cake as requested, and made a coffee infused white chocolate icing, but because the kitchen was so cold it kept separating. Two batches ended up being re-purposed as a mutant coffee fudge, and I soon realised a melted chocolate icing was not going to work.

Enter the saviour: traditional, staple buttercream icing. I don't tend to work with buttercream often because, even though it's an old favourite, it can be very tempramental if the atmospheric factors aren't all perfect. This time, though, it really worked and everything was saved. However, I will impress the importance of all the ingredients needed to make the buttercream being at least room temperature. Put your butter somewhere warm, or heat it on defrost in the microwave, and don't use hot coffee.

FREE FROM

☑ Soya (check for soya lecithin)
☑ Yeast
☑ Wheat

CONTAINS
☒ Dairy (use substitute in italics for dairy free)
☒ Gluten
☒ Eggs
☒ Refined sugar products

INGREDIMENTS:

For the sponge cake:

• 4 ounces (115 grammes) white spelt flour
• 2 ounces (30 grammes) cornflour
• 2 teaspoons (10 millilitres) baking powder
• 3 medium egg
• 6 ounces (170 grammes) caster sugar
• 3 ounces (85 grammes) melted butter or margarine
• 3 fluid ounces (90 millilitres) strong black coffee
• 1 teaspoon (5 millilitres) vanilla essence
• Optional: 1 tablespoon of ground coffee, for extra flavour and visual impact

For the buttercream filling and icing:

• 6 ounces (170 grammes) very soft butter, or margarine
• 12 ounces (340 grammes) icing sugar, sieved
• 2 tablespoons (30 millilitres) very strong black coffee at room temperature, or 2 teaspoons of espresso powder dissolved in 2 tablespoons (30 millilitres) of hot water, allowed to cool
• 1 teaspoon (5 millilitres) vanilla essence
• Chocolate or coloured sprinkles, to decorate

HOW-TO:

To make the cake,

• Preheat the oven to 170ºC (325ºF/Gas Mk. 3) and grease and flour an 8 inch (20 centimetre) round tin.
• Make the cake batter following this recipe, substituting the oil for melted butter and the milk for coffee (as in the ingredients listed above). If using ground coffee, sieve in with the flours.
• Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until golden brown and springy to the touch.
• Remove from the oven, run a knife around the edge to loosen from the tin, then allow to cool completely in the tin.

To decorate the cake,

• Put the butter in a large mixing bowl and beat with an electric hand mixer until very soft and light.
• Add in the icing sugar in three additions, alternating with the 2 tablespoons of coffee and finishing with icing sugar. Make sure to beat well between additions. If the buttercream starts to split, it means it's too cold. This, however, can be easily fixed with a hair dryer.
• Cut the cake into two layers, using the top of the cake as the bottom layer. Fix the bottom layer to a plate or cake board with a little smear of icing, then fill the cake with a third of the buttercream. Put the top layer on, upside down, meaning that the flat bottom of the cake is now on top.
• Use the remaining buttercream to ice the cake (putting a crumb coat on first), and if you like you can use some to pipe decorations around the top and bottom edge.
• If you like, you can add some colour with sprinkles: I put a little splash in the centre.
• Allow to set for at least an hour before serving.

This was actually a very tasty confection, and a lot lighter and more delicate because it was only lightly flavoured with coffee, as opposed to being super coffee-tastic. This keeps well for up to a week in an airtight container.

Christmas Cake of 2015 (so it begins...)

And so, the time of year rolls around to prepare the Christmas cake. Wait, what? That was October? Oops, I was a little busy. Yes, unfortunately my Christmas cake and pudding creation was delayed this year somewhat. My 30 hour a week job is taking up 42 hours a week these days, and I have very sadly been struggling significantly with depression. I did it: I said the 'D' word.

Over the course of the last 10 years, I've struggled on and off which depression, usually triggered by a sudden life change. Those have been abound recently, which has resulting in my spending most of the time that I'm not at work in bed. I haven't been baking unless utterly necessary, which means my kitchen has been getting kind of neglected. I cannot wait to be better, but it's not looking like that's going to be any time soon.

But anyway! Enough of the super dismal talk of mental illness. Back to baking!

So I made the Christmas cake this week, and this time I did things a little differently. I definitely have taken after my Grandma in this department: Mum says Grandma used to try a different recipe for Christmas cake every year, but never wrote them down, so she'd never be able to remember what she'd done.

I decided to go a little less alcoholic than usual: typically, I soak the fruit in basically a whole bottle of sherry. However, this time I soaked it in hot Chai tea that was spiked with a little spiced rum instead (Lidl's knock-off Captain Morgan is a Godsend), inspired by Delia Smith's recipe for Creole fruit cake.

This recipe also takes a little inspiration from the recipe for Christmas cake on the Odlums official website, that used a melted method instead of a creamed method.

FREE FROM
☑ Soya (check for soya lecithin)
☑ Yeast
☑ Wheat

CONTAINS
☒ Dairy (use ingredients in italics for a dairy-free version)
☒ Nuts (use ingredients in italics for a nut-free version)
☒ Eggs

INGREDIMENTS
Makes one 8 inch (20 centimetre) round cake

For the fruit, the night before:

• 12 ounces (340 grammes) mixed dried fruit of your choice: currants, raisins, sultanas, candied peel, glacé cherries (rinsed thoroughly and chopped), prunes (chopped, etc.
• 4 ounces (115 grammes) ground almonds
• 8 fluid ounces (240 millilitres) hot tea: Chai or Assam work best
• One shot (42 millilitres) spiced rum or whiskey
• 2 tablespoons (30 millilitres) brown sugar

For the cake mixture:

• 6 ounces (170 grammes) plain white spelt flour
• 2 teaspoons (10 millilitres) mixed spice (or, if you want to be adventurous and make your own: 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon, half a teaspoon of ground ginger, a quarter teaspoon of ground coriander, and two pinches of ground cloves)
• 6 ounces (170 grammes) light brown sugar
• 6 ounces (170 grammes) butter or margarine, cut into pieces
• 3 medium eggs
• Grated zest of half a lemon
• Grated zest and juice of half an orange

HOW-TO

• In a large glass mixing bowl, put the dired fruit, ground almonds, brown sugar, hot tea, and whiskey. Cover with a tea towel and allow to soak overnight.
• The next day, prepare your cake tin. Grease and flour the inside, and then line the bottom and sides with baking paper. Preheat the oven to Preheat your oven to 150°C (300°F, Gas Mk.2, or moderately cool) and set the rack in the centre of the oven with plenty of room to spare from the rack 
• In a saucepan, heat the remaining sugar, butter, lemon zest, and orange juice and zest. Melt over a medium-low heat until all the sugar and butter have melted together. Bring to the boil and cook for about 1 minute.
• Pour the melted mixture onto the soaked fruit and mix well. Allow to cool to a touchable heat.
• Once cool, beat in the eggs, one at a time, alternating with a tablespoon of flour. 
• Sieve in the remaining flour with the spices, and mix well with a wooden spoon or spatula.
• Pour the mixture into the prepared tin, and cook for at least 1½ hours before testing with a wooden cocktail stick. If there is still mixture stuck to the stick, cook for another 15 minutes. In total, the cake could take up 2 to 2½ hours to cook.
• Once cooked, remove from the oven and cool in the tin on a wire rack. Don't turn out of the tin until it is fully cool.

To store, wrap in greaseproof paper and either foil or clingfilm until decorating. I recommend covering with marzipan and icing about 3 days before Christmas.

Gingerbread House Part II: Baking and Assembly

Assuming that you have read Part I of my gingerbread construction saga, this is how I made the templates into a reality. As I said, I used regular white card to make the templates of the walls and chimney. At this point, no template exists for the roof, as I drafted that with paper after I assembled the gingerbread walls.

The house pattern includes:

• 2 side walls,
• 1 front/back wall,
• 1 front/back chimney,
• 1 top of chimney, and
• 1 side of chimney.

I made a batch of gingerbread dough using the method in this recipe, and the following ingredients:

• 1 ounce (30 grammes) treacle
• 4 ounces (115 grammes) butter, or margarine, at room temperature
• 4 ounces (115 grammes) light brown sugar
• 1 medium egg
• 9 ounces (250 grammes) spelt flour
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon ground coriander
• ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
• Pinch of salt

Unlike the original recipe, I use all spelt flour and no cornflour. The cornflour makes the gingerbread crumbly: nice texture to eating, but not as structurally sound. I divided the dough into two discs, wrapped them in cling film, and refrigerated them overnight. This is important, as it makes the dough good for handling, and not too sticky.

The next day, I sprinkled my work surface with flour and rolled out the dough to a thickness of a quarter inch (5 millimetres). I then cut out the pieces by laying them on the dough and cutting around them with a pizza wheel. I flipped the Front/Back template over to get the back of the house, and did the same with the triangular chimney template. I had to re-roll the dough once or twice, I think.

As pictured below, I cut a door and two jaunty windows out of the front part of the house, and two more windows out of the back. I filled them up with crushed boiled sweets, which then melted to create stained glass windows. This is a great little trick.

Once they were cooked, I allowed them to cool completely before moving them so the windows didn't get destroyed. Once all the pieces were cooked, the construction began! I used some royal icing (to my shame, I used the instant kind) and dyed half of it a cement grey colour, and the other half orange. I put the icing in two disposable icing bags, and cut a wide opening (about 5 millilitres) on the dark one, and a narrow opening (about 2 millilitres) on the orange one.

I stood the back of the house up, glued the sides on, and used cans to keep everything in place while it was setting. After the icing was set, I put the back of the house flat on the board, ends of the walls pointing up, so I could safely glue the front of the house on without destroying the delicate windows or the sides of the doorway.

I had bought a load of Smarties, jelly beans, and pretzel sticks from the shop, and I stuck them all on with the dark royal icing before adding flourishes with the orange icing. This was really just a going with the flow creative experience: I didn't plan what it would look like, I just go absorbed in it. I also did the chimney, as you can see.

Once everything was fused together, I draped a piece of paper over the pitched roof and drew a template for the roof slates. I made the roof slates out of dark chocolate, and decorated them with orange royal icing. To make the scalloped edges, I first piped the outline with royal icing, which I broke off when the roof slates were set. I stuck the roof slates on with the dark icing, using more cans to prop them up so they wouldn't slide off the roof while the icing was setting. 

I then stuck on the chimney piece; I was convinced it would go right through the roof, but the chocolate was surprisingly strong. I then did some more flourishes with the orange icing, making a roof cap tiles effect.

This was intensely fun, and took quite a lot of time. I'd say from start to finish took about 4 or 5 hours. It was so worth it, even if I didn't end up entering it into the competition. It did however get pride of place on the counter top in the gallery coffee dock...

THIS TIME IN 2014: Salted Caramel Shortbread (Wheat Free)
THIS TIME IN 2013: No blog

Gingerbread House Part I: Drafting the Template

Right. I will explain the entire process of making the gingerbread house from start to finish, from sketching to adding the last little flourishes.

First of all, I took to my sketchbook to do a few doodles about what I'd like my gingerbread house to look like. This is the first step I take for pretty much anything, even birthday cakes. I start drawing and let my imagination take me in whatever direction it pleases.

Here are the pages of my sketchbook that I dedicated to my design:

On the left are some generic putting-ideas-down drawings (including some designs for a completely different gingerbread skeleton idea I had based on the teddies holding sweets biscuits I did for my Picnic Afternoon Tea Party). 

On the right is a more concrete concept for the front of the house, showing the front of the house and one side of the chimney.

These two pages are some actual teasing out how it will be made sketches. My first concept for the roof slates was to make two royal icing run outs (plaques), but then I decided to use dark chocolate decorated with royal icing instead.

The next step was to turn the sketches, doodles, and scribbles into reality. To do this, I traced the drawing that I did of the front of the house onto some card, and used that to guide me in making the other parts of the template: the two walls and the individual parts of the chimney.

I used a ruler to measure the two sides of the front of the house and used the measurements to judge the height of the two walls. I then I chose how deep I'd make the house (I decided about 4 inches (10 centimetres) would be enough) and used this to measure the width of the walls. I used a similar process to design the chimney templates.

I designed the roof template after I had baked and assembled the walls of the house. Once I had assembled the house with royal icing, I folded a piece of paper in half and draped it over where I would like the roof to be, and traced around where the gingerbread touched the paper. I then extended the edges by about about half an inch (a centimetre) to give the roof a nice overhang.

To make sure I knew how to put it together, I drew little guidelines and indicators on the edges of the templates. This way I'd know which way around everything had to be.

I apologise for not having more pictures to show you the process in detail! I was so busy doing the actual project that I didn't think ahead to writing about it. But, when I get round to making my Christmas gingerbread house, I'll be a little more thorough.

For how to bake and assemble the house, keep an eye on Monday's upload CLICK HERE!

THIS TIME IN 2014: Spelt Doughnuts Video Tutorial!

THIS TIME IN 2013: Confectionery Failures and New Job (thus Temporary Pause in Blogging)!

Baking Competitions, Chili Con Carne, and Parties

Now that the Hallowe'en madness has calmed down, and work isn't as manic, I can finally do a full write up of the gingerbread house experience, and the party.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was designing a gingerbread house for a baking competition. I had done all the research, done the sketches, drafted the template myself, and made the whole house, before I found out that the baking competition was for children.

Even though it had a "Big Kids" category for those over 17, I still felt a little odd bringing a super ornate house that I'd spent hours on to a competition designed for children. It felt like turning up to a school sports day in full professional sportswear with isotonic drinks, having trained for weeks beforehand. My decision to withdraw my entry was greeted by my friends and mother by surprise and disappointment, but I still brought it to work for people to look at. There were a few small children who came into the gallery that really liked looking at it.

Also, over the Hallowe'en weekend, I had somewhat of a mini mental breakdown, which may have clouded my judgment. I didn't want people thinking I was a loser for turning up to a kids' baking contest.

Read the full Gingerbread House on Friday! If I'd included it in this entry, it would have been way too long.

I will be keeping my eyes open for another baking contest, though. Or maybe I'll host my own...

The party I hosted on Friday the 30th went very well! Everyone showed up that should have, we played silly party games for a few hours, and then I got to catch up with a friend of mine that had returned from her second yearlong stint of working in Seoul, South Korea. It was lovely to catch up with her.

I made a big ol' vat of chili con carne for everyone to eat, and it didn't last five minutes. I think everyone was pretty hungry by that point in the evening. I cheated big time in my recipe, but it was utterly delicious:

• I emptied 2¼ pounds (1 kilogramme) of minced beef, one grated medium onion, one chopped red pepper, and a few teaspoons of some leftover fajita spice I had languishing in my spice rack into a jam pot (or very, very large saucepan).
• Over high heat, I cooked and stirred the mixture until the meat is very fine. If you like the meat a little more chunky, allow the beef to cook for a few minutes in between stirring.
• Once the meat was mostly brown, I added one carton (500 millilitres) of passata, and filled the empty carton with water and added that too. I also added one jar (325 grammes) of hot salsa dip, and did a similar rinsing and watering process.
• I stirred in about 2 tablespoons (30 millilitres) of tomato purée for extra thickness, and also a few crunches of my black pepper mill. I then cooked it on a rough simmer for about 45 minutes, until it was nice and thick.

It was fabulous. I served it with some cooked Basmati rice (which I know isn't the usual variety of rice to eat with a South American style meal, but it's the only rice I eat ever), and I had dyed some orange and some black to add some little flecks of Hallowe'en goodness. Unfortunately, I don't have photographs of the meal, but trust me it looked great!

Overall, this batch of chili con carne cost about €7.50 ($8.15 or £5.30) and fed 8 very hungry people, and could have fed 10 normally hungry people. Including the rice, the meal cost about one euro per person. It's a great meal to have up your sleeves for cheap entertaining.

I think the Hallowe'en festivities were a huge success! Apart from a little falter of self-confidence on the competition front.