Yuletide Yums For Stressed Out Mums

‘Twas the day before Christmas

and all through the house

nothing was cooking

not even a grouse.

This last minute guide

we help you create

Yuletide Yums

to fill every plate!

This is the first instalment of the Desperate Wife’s last minute guide to a home cooked Christmas feast. I like many other women start the Christmas madness with the best of intentions. Planning home-made puddings and cakes is great, but with working, shopping and just everything I can’t say no to, I always end up doing all my cooking on Christmas Eve.Some things need to be done on the 23^rd such as soaking the ham and making the Christmas Cake. If the Christmas Cake is already made, the children can have fun decorating it while you get on with other things in the kitchen. All the following recipes have been cooked year on year by myself and I hope you find these pages useful. Remember to email with any of you own last minute

Christmas recipes and we will publish them on this site and offer a prize for the very best submissions.

First things first for these last minute recipes to work you need to have certain items in your store cupboard, fridge or freezer.

Shopping List

Plain Flour

Self-raising Flour

Butter

Margarine

Eggs

Sweet Mincemeat

Mixed Fruit

Glacé Cherries

Fondant Icing

Marzipan

Streaky Bacon

Skinless Thin Sausages

3 x Packs of Good Sausages

Vegetable suet

2 x Cranberry Sauce

Trifle Sponges

Any Large Bar of Chocolate

Double Cream

Custard Powder

Orange Jelly

1 Tin of Mandarin Oranges

Any Citric Liqueur (optional)

This list means you can make and decorate a Christmas Cake, make a pudding, mince pies, sausage rolls, sausage and cranberry stuffing balls, and bacon rolls.

Optional is home-made Simple Orange Trifle and Chocolate and Cranberry Gateaux. If you feel you must buy deserts then you must, but think before you spend on frozen Pavlova’s and cheesecakes do you really need them. We all over buy thoughtlessly on the run up to Christmas but in reality the shops now are only shut for 24 hours!

Basic Sausage Rolls Recipe

8oz (225 g) plain flour

pinch of salt

4oz (100 g) fat (butter or margarine)

cold water

egg to seal and glaze

1lb (450 g) Sausage meat

(sausages are better if you are adding

anything to your sausage roll filling)

1. Place flour, salt and fat in a large mixing bowl

2. Rub together until fine breadcrumb consistency is achieved

3. Add 4 tablespoons of cold water and using a knife

4. Run the cold tap and hold your hand underneath it for a while.

5. Gently knead together to make dough coat with flour and place in a food bad in the fridge while you wash-up and have a cup of coffee.

6. Lightly flour a suitable surface and rolling pin

7. Gently work pastry into a square shape and roll out turning and flouring until an oblong shape of about 8×12 inches is achieve.

8. Roll sausage meat into ½x8 inch sausages.

9. Place long sausage onto the pastry approximately ½ inch from the top

10. Brush egg along the underside and the taking the top of the pastry lift over then roll and cut.

11. Brush with egg cut the long strip of sausage roll into 1 inch rolls place on a baking tray leaving a gap between sausage rolls.

12. Continue until all the sausage meat and pastry is used up and you should have about 20 sausage rolls

13. Place in oven and cook for about 20 to 30 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius.

Sweet Basic Pastry Recipe

8oz (225 g) plain flour

4oz (100 g) Butter

with 2oz (50 g) sugar

2oz (50 g) ground almonds optional

(if adding ground almonds use 5oz of butter)

1 egg

milk to glaze

1. Really straight forward make pastry same as for sausage rolls dry ingredients then fat the rub together then add egg, kneed, rest and roll out on a floured surface.

2. Cut out 24 circles place 12 in greased shallow bun tray.

3. Put heaped teaspoon of sweet mincemeat into the centre of each case.

4. Brush the edge of each case with a little milk place lid on case then glaze with milk. Using a fork gently press edges together and make holes in the lid to release the steam.

5. If you wish you can sprinkle a little sugar over the pies before baking at 180 degrees Celsius for approximately 20 minutes.

   Last Minute Christmas Cake

This cake is perfect if you have someone in the family with an egg allergy or if they are glutton intolerant substitute the self raising flour for 4oz of rice, 4oz of maize flour and 2oz of dried mash potato (unsalted).

1/2 pint water

4oz (100 g) butter or margarine

4oz (100 g) soft brown sugar (white if that’s all you have)

10oz (250 g) dried mixed fruit

10oz self raising flour

1 level tsp of bicarbonate of soda

10 glaise cherries

2tsp mixed spice

2oz (50 g) chopped nuts (optional)

1-3tsp gravy browning (optional for dark rich colour)

Ready to roll marzipan and white fondant icing

1. Take large saucepan add the water, butter, sugar and dried fruit bring to the boil then simmer for ten minutes and turn off heat and allow to cool.

2. Add flour, bicarbonate of soda and mixed spice to the cooled fruit mixture. Stir until all the flour is absorbed into the mixture then add the gravy browning a spoonful at a time until you think the cake is dark enough for you. Then add the cherries and nuts and spoon into a greased 9in cake tin.

3. Place in a moderate oven 140c for 45min then lower the temperature and cook for a further 30 to 40 minutes testing with a knife to see if it is cooked.

4. Allow cake to cool than store in an airtight container until ready to decorate.

This cake will last a long time without drying out and is very economical. To decorate roll out marzipan cut a circle large enough to cover top of the cake and then trim to edge. Roll out icing and do the same again. Then take the rest of the icing and give it to the children to make snowballs and snowmen with.

Last Minute Easy Orange Trifle

Anyone can make this trifle its easy and makes a refreshing change to shop bought deserts.

1 orange jelly

4 trifle sponges

1 tin mandarin oranges

2 tblsp Orange Liqueur (optional)

Custard Powder

1 pint milk

2 tbsp sugar

1. Make jelly following instruction, before adding cold water open the tin of mandarins and use the juice in the jelly.

2. Take the trifle sponges arrange in a glass bowl add the mandarin segments and liqueur (optional). Pour the cooled jelly over the sponges then when cool put in the fridge to set.

3. Follow the instruction on tin for making custard (not instant or tinned custard) then allow to cool before topping the jelly base and smooth the top with back of the spoon and decorate with whipped cream (optional).

This is a really simple trifle and so much more impressive then just putting out a generic supermarket desert. The basic recipe for this trifle is my mother’s. She made this for Sunday tea and I have adapted it over the years to include many different flavours.

I hope you try these simple recipes and see just how easy they are.

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Tags: christmas cake, christmas cooking, Christmas Crunchmania, christmas recipes, easy to follow recipes, mince pies, trifle

This entry was posted on December 10, 2008 at 2:10 pm and is filed under Crunchie's Christmas Munchies, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.