"Run, run as fast as you can...

...you can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!"

Is there anything more Christmassy than gingerbread? My Pinterest is full of peppermint recipes - is this an American thing? I don't really associate peppermint with Christmas, but gingerbread? Oh yes. Gingerbread can take on many different forms, depending where you're eating it. It can literally be a loaf that you cut into chunks to eat, or it can be thinner and more biscuit like, that break not with a crack but softly. This biscuit type of gingerbread is what we're talking about today, more specifically gingerbread men. The first gingerbread man was attributed to Elizabeth the First, who apparently presented foreign dignitaries with gingerbread men in their likeness. To me this seems like a fantastic way to get foreigners to like you - who doesn't love novelty shaped biscuits?

Over time the biscuits have taken on a more generic "man" shape, but you can really shape them however you want. Recipes also vary, but this is mine.

Gingerbread Men

325g Plain flour

1tsp Bicarbonate of soda

2tsp ground ginger

125g butter

100g brown sugar

4tbsp golden syrup

1. Put the butter, brown sugar and golden syrup in a sauce pan and melt down until it's smooth and shiny.

3. Add the dry ingredients to the pan.

4. Mix until a dough is formed and squash into a ball. It's wonderfully warm and squidgy, and you won't want to stop holding it. But you have to because it's time to roll it out! Cover your surface and your rolling pin in flour, and roll the dough out to just under a cm.

5. Use festive cookie cutters and cut the dough out into any shape you want. If you're artsy you could cut them out free hand, but I am not that creative!

6. Put in an oven preheated to 170°C for about 10 minutes, or until they're golden brown on top. Leave to cool.

7. Ice however you want, preferably in front of Strictly Come Dancing with a mug of hot chocolate. Very festive, very cosy. Try not to eat too many of the biscuits as you ice.

Saturday Night at the Movies: Saving Mr Banks

I'll start by saying this is a spoiler free post - I'm trying to encourage you to go and see the film, not ruin it for you in one foul swoop. And I'm trying to encourage you to see the film because I think it is truly wonderful.

Focusing on the story of how Walt Disney went about trying to persuade the author of Mary Poppins, P.L. Travers to give up the rights to her story, the film is incredibly moving, filled with inspired acting. I don't think there was a weak link in the casting. The film is sort of two films really, alternating between the Disney studios in the 1960s and Travers' childhood in 1907 Australia. Although it was good to understand the links between the past and the films present, to me a little to much time was spent in the past. This was my only complaint. Despite having read many reviews stating it isn't completely accurate in parts, I found this easy to overlook, I think the artistic license is suitably used. It's beautifully filmed and the soundtrack incorporates both the songs from Mary Poppins and and original soundtrack.

I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and urge you to give it a go! I will warn you though, it made me cry like a baby. But I didn't feel sad when I left the cinema, it was a happy sad sort of cry, and I left feeling like I'd seen something that had messages that would stay with me for a good while to come.

Let me know what you thought of it if you've seen it already, or if you're planning on seeing it.

Honey Mustard Winter Vegetable Soup

It's December. It's pretty chilly. Lets make soup. Grab some veggies - I went for parsnip, carrot and potato (and onion, don't forget the onion). It doesn't matter how much - the more people you're feeding the more veg you need. 

Chop your veggies.

 Fry your onions and add the rest of your veg after about five minutes. Don't let them brown too much, just soften then. Cover the vegetables with boiling water.

Add a spoonful of stock, a drizzle of honey and a blob of mustard. This is going to give the soup the taste of the honey mustard roast vegetables you have with a Sunday dinner.

When it's bubbled for half an hour, whizz it with a handheld blender until all the lumps and bumps are gone.

Serve in your favourite mug with some fresh bread. A quick, healthy lunch that will warm you right up! I love thick winter soups like this, but what's your favourite soup?

Fondue for Two

Can you guess what we were doing with marshmallows, strawberries and grapes? I suppose I've rather given it away in the title, but the rhyme was too tempting (I won't say good, that would be a lie...) to resist. Fondue! Chocolate fondue to be precise. Just look at my face tucking into it. A real luxury, it was just the thing to cheer us up after a long day of working on our dissertations. The first draft is due in on Friday, and as we've been working on them since June, it can't come soon enough. This little treat really cheered up the start of the week. We chose fondue but I'm curious - what do you tuck into when you're feeling indulgent?

Deck the halls!

Decorating a student flat for Christmas isn't always easy. Getting a student flat to look good any time of the year can be hard. The furniture tends to be mismatched, the carpets are functional and everything just has a slight air of neglect about it. We are particularly lucky to live in an really nice flat with a landlady who really cares about it.It's still not that easy to make it look exactly how we'd like, but here's what we've come up with to add some festive cheer.

The first step was picking the tree - not an easy task! We didn't want to go wild, but really, no one could call the one on the right of the photo a tree. It's definitely a Christmas bush.

Dom named the trees and gave a heartfelt speech about how a Christmas bush just wasn't quite suitable...

...and so the medium sized tree, Dave, was chosen.

We popped him on a table to give him a bit of a boost, which made him lovely and proportionate to everyone but me. I may not have mentioned this before, but I am very very tall, as you can see from the blurry photo below.

Even though none of us have ever had our own Christmas tree before we managed to muster up a respectable amount of decorations, and didn't have to buy a thing!

Check out all of our recipe books - would you believe Delia belongs to one of the boys! Have you put your decorations up yet?

Mince Pie Cupcakes with Brandy Buttercream

Mince pies are great, truly a food of the season. But sometimes you need to mix things up a bit, and make something new. Which is why I bring to you mince pie flavour cupcakes. Cupcakes with a bit of mincemeat mixed in to them topped off with brandy buttercream, to replace the brandy pouring cream so frequently paired with mincepies. I was really pleased with my idea, and less pleased when I googled it and found hundreds of variations on the theme. Nevertheless, I had fun making them and they are really tasty, so here is the recipe for my mince pie cupcakes.

Mince Pie Cupcakes

112g Unsalted butter
112g Caster sugar
2 Free range eggs
125g Mince meat
110g Self raising flour
1tsp Baking powder
A splash of brandy

Brandy Buttercream
220g Icing Sugar
100g Unsalted butter
A splash of brandy

1. Cream the butter and sugar

 
2. Mix in two eggs. Aren't they a lovely golden colour?

3. Add the mincmeat

4. And the self raising flour and baking powder

5. Add a splash of brandy - it's up to you how generous you're feeling, although you may need an extra tablespoon of flour if you add a lot

6. The mix is quite a thick mix, droppable I think is how it's usually described

Let's just take a moment to admire to Christmas aspects of this bake - my beautiful sparkly spatula, M&S's finest, and the lovely Paperchase cupcake cases, which halfway through baking I realised may or may not belong to Anna. She's eaten cupcakes though, so I'm sure she doesn't mind too much...

7. Fill your cupcake cases. These cakes don't rise too much, so you can be quite generous.

8. Pop into the oven at 180°C for 15-20 minutes. Perhaps not quite as long as I left them this time... oopsies. Ignoring the slightly burnt edges, look at them. Aren't they cute? But I think they're missing something. They're begging to be iced...

9. So leave them to cool, whip up your buttercream and put it in a piping bag. Pipe swirls, and sprinkle with edible glitter for a final Christmassy sparkle. 

 10. If you're not feeling the piping - let's face it sometimes you just want a cupcake, you don't want to get all sticky filling a piping bag - you can just smear the icing on the top. I promise it tastes just as good.

I'm going to be showing you a few more of my favourite Christmas recipes over Advent, but I'd love to hear about some of your favourite sweet treats for this time of the year too!

Do you hear what I hear?

Do you? I can hear carols creeping onto radio playlists, cards landing on the floor of the porch with a thump, and the rustling of wrappers from the chocolates in an advent calendar. I can hear Christmas, just around the corner. Advent wreaths will be lit in churches all around the world today, and the countdown begins. Settle down today with a mince pie and a hot chocolate and take a moment of peace. Try not to let the next few weeks descend into complete mayhem. Just enjoy it. Happy Advent!