Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas! Or Happy Other Non-denominational Celebratory Activity of Choice. :D
It is 5am, mysteriously I am not asleep yet. May have something to do with the meat baking in the oven. :D;
Clock I painted for an arts fundraiser at the high school during my first practicum. Acrylic paint is super-bright and hard to work with. haha Oil paint, why can't you be more versatile and non-toxic? XD;
Cake I baked for a charity cake auction during my SECOND practicum. I notice a trend here... But it was super-fun! The cake is vanilla/lemon with hazelnut buttercream and dark chocolate gnache. One of my students won it in the auction not knowing I made it. He later ran up to us (me and my associate teacher) to brag about how amazing his cake tasted. (his words, not mine) So I guess I did something right. :D
Speaking of cake...
This year's line up of Christmas cake! My mother and I collaborated on these. The little square chocolate one is my mother's brain-child, using my gnache and ginger molases cookie base. Guys, they're amazing. The lemon cream goes really well with them. *_* Only my mother is crazy enough to use cookie bases in cakes. haha
The little swirly cookies are honey date & walnut pinwheels. They're my dad's favourite. The recipe was fairly plain, so I added lemon zest to the dates, and plenty of nutmeg and some cinnamon and allspice to the batter. Since they vaguely resemble healthy eating, I don't feel too bad scarfing a bunch of these down. Dates are good for you, right? XD;
The rest of the stuff is banana roll (which is yummy), cream/cream cheese/coconut ball things which kinda taste like those Ferero Rafael balls, and "Russian Tea Cakes/Mexican Wedding Cakes". I have discovered that they're also Croatian "Modlice", so I guess super-dry, nut and fat-based cookies are a global phenomenon. Funnily enough, none of the online recipes I found called for lard, which is what my mother insists on using when making Modlice. Lard-cookies... yowza.
So there you go f-list! Small life-update and Christmas well-wishings! I hope you all have a wonderful day~♥