I love a bit of festive baking – and its super fun when you get the kiddies involved. Me and my Nephews made some festive chocolate chip cookies – heres how it went.
What do you need:
Cadbury cookie pack
Oil
Milk
Baking tray
Baking parchment
Mixing bowl
Spoon
Festive sprinkles
Icing sugar
What do you need to do:
Follow the box instructions – pre heat the oven accordingly.
Empty the packet mix into a bowl and combine with the oil and milk.
Roll out into 10 equal balls and place evenly on the tray.
Press down a little.
Bake.
Add Sprinkles on top with a little icing so that they stick (or you could bake them with the sprinkles on top but they do melt a little)
I love putting together a Christmas eve box for my Nephews and Niece. I have been doing it each year since my Nephew Noah was born. It is one of my favourite traditions as I love to treat them.
You can get some great (various sized boxes) for this purpose from places like Card Factory, B&M, Home Bargins, and most Card or Pop up Christmas Shops.
It’s fun and festive finding little bits and bobs to go in them.
Here are some things that I usually go for:
Chocolate Coins
Box of Festive Cookie Mix/Cupcakes
Chocolate Santa
Festive Sweets
Christmas activity pack
Christmas arts & craft sets
Christmas Pjs
Christmas Socks
Christmas decoration
Novelty Christmas headware/hats/hairbands
Reindeer food
Hot chocolate sachet
Mini Christmas games eg Christmas Snap
Christmas hair bands
Hopefully that gives you a little bit of inspiration!
I love an excuse to bake and Easter is the perfect one.
Also, I can now eat chocolate again as I gave it up on the 8th of Jan until Good Friday! Horray.
So, here are two Easter bakes that I have made this Easter weekend.
They are super easy, relatively quick and even child friendly.
Let’s take a look!
Chocolate Easter Nests
Chocolate Easter Nests
I surely don’t even need to include a recipe for this Easter classic!?!
This Easter season special is great to do with kids and one of my favourite ‘cakes’ whenever I seem them on sale.
I had to use shredded wheat this time as we already had it in the cupboard but my preference is cornflakes, and of course I used Cadbury chocolate and mini eggs.
Cadbury Creme Egg Brownies
Cadbury Creme Egg BrowniesGooey goodness!
These brownies came out super gooey and were so delicious, especially warm!
I had this ‘Brownie in a jar’ mix from Christmas, that I hadn’t used yet and all you needed to do was add 125g of butter and 2 eggs (whisked together first). Super easy!
I then cut the creme eggs in half and pushed them into the batter, fondant side up.
A brownie recipe that I use alot is a BBC Good Good one, I’ll leave a link here .
I have done a few hauls over here on my blog before and I usually do one at this time of year because of the Jan sales… and this year was no exception, which is surprising as its such a strange time.
What Lush did this year was that they sent out a list of what products were on sale and their sale price (50% off ππ») and you rang through your order, paid online and collected in store, socially distanced.
It worked really well and it meant we could still get some bargin goodies.
Me and my twin sister sarah always grab some Lush bargains in the January sales so we were delighted that we still could (and even more so now that we are again in another lockdown! What else is there to do but have a bath when you are bored!?!)
Let’s see what I picked up in the sale…
Shoot for the stars Golden WonderSnow Fairy Bath Bomb & Snow Fairy BubblebarSnow fairy bath bomb ButtervearJurassic Spark gift box A robot and a dinosaur bath bomb!
I was super happy with my purchases! A few of these I have tried before, but I hadn’t tried anything from the Jurassic Spark Box so that’s exciting.
During December, me and my friend at work have been trying out different mince pies. We work together two days so on a Monday I would bring one in and on a Thursday she would bring one in.
We got to try six different mince pies during this time, and we rated them to see which ones we preferred.
We tried the following Mince Pies:
Aldi Specially Selected
Gregg’s Bakery
Sainsburys Shortcrust Bakery
M&S Puff Pastry
Waitrose Extra Special
Co op Locally Sourced
β’ The Rankings β’
We went for a few categories to score each mince pie on, these were:
Appearance
Overall Taste
Pastry
Fillage
And then we gave them an overall taste each.
β’ The Results β’
Aldi Specially Selected
Appearence: 9/10 & 8/10
Overall taste: 7/10 & 7/10
Pastry: 7/10 & 7/10
Fillage: 8/10 & 7/10
Overall Rating: 7/10 & 7/10
Gregg’s
Appearance: 8/10 & 8/10
Overall taste: 5/10 & 7/10
Pastry: 6/10 & 7/10
Fillage: 8/10 & 7/10
Overall rating: 5/10 & 6/10
Sainsburys Bakery
Appearence: 8/10 & 8/10
Overall taste: 8/10 & 8/10
Pastry: 9/10 & 9/10
Fillage: 5/10 & 5/10
Overall rating: 8.5/10 & 9/10
M&S Puff Pastry
Appearence: 6/10 & 6/10
Overall taste: 6.5/10 & 8/10
Pastry: 5/10 & 3/10
Fillage: 3/10 & 3/10
Overall rating: 6/10 & 7/10
Waitrose
Appearence: 8/10 & 8/10
Overall taste: 9/10 & 6/10
Pastry: 8.5/10 & 8/10
Fillage: 8/10 & 8/10
Overall rating: 8/10 & 8/10
Co-op Locally Sourced
Appearence: 6/10 & 6/10
Overall taste: 10/10 & 10/10
Pastry: 8/10 & 9/10
Fillage: 10/10 & 9/10
Overall rating: 9.5/10 & 9/10
So, the winner of our taste testing was… (drum roll please)
The Co-op Locally Sourced !
These are my favourite and even with trying others that hasn’t changed, and my friend agreed too.
I LOVE festive food (& food in general) and Christmas is one of those times of year where we indulge a little more, enjoy a few of our favourite snacks and have a nice time.
… I like having some of these, particularly, at Christmas as they make me feel super festive, but obviously alot of them can be had at other times of the year!
Here are some of my favourites…
A absolute festive staple.
This is one of my favourite chocolates. I would of course eat this at other times of the year but, I often just get the grab bags or bars, saving the actual chocolate orange for christmas time.
It always feels so festive, perhaps it’s the Christmas/clementine similarity.
And thanks to old Saint Nick, I always get one in my stocking.
Now I do only eat these ones at Christmas! Mince pies.
These are a treat that I have started to like only over the last five years or so, and I love them throughout November and December.
Me and my work friend did a mince pie taste testing this year so look out for that in a Blogmas post to come.
Shortbread is my favourite type of biscuit and I LOVE them at Christmas. I especially love the M&S Christmas, musical tins. These little packs of Chritmas trees are delish too.
Tesco’s Christmas shortbread selection tins are my favourite in terms of taste, super delicious and with lots of sugar on top.
PRINGLES! The ultimate crisps.
I try not to eat tooooo many because they really are addictive!! So I always get these for Christmas as they are a buffet essential ππ»
Sour Cream and Chive are my absolute fave.
Hot Chocolate is a Christmas must have!
Perfect for the cold weather and these are a couple of my favourites.
I recently discovered the Cadbury hot chocolate and how good it is. I’m sure I’ve tried it before but not made it well, because I can’t get enough of it now!! I was definatly making it wrong Haha.
Mint hot chocolate is my favourite flavour and there is something about the minty taste that makes me feel super festive.
Hot chocolates are so cosy π₯°
Crackers & cheese are a Christmas must have. Great as a little snack or part of an epic buffet.
& finally…
Our tipple of choice!
It’s got to be a nice, ice cold fruit cidar. I don’t really drink casually, but I do love to have a few of these in the fridge, ready for the festive period π
It’s one of the times of year that I do actually fancy a casual one here and there.
These came out so well, are super chocolatey (I always add extra chocolate π€¦πΌββοΈ) & look how cute they are!!
I’m not as great at the finer detail when it comes to decorating things like this but, even I could do this haha! and I love how they turned out.
These would be great for a Christmas buffet table (and yes I am still having one even though there won’t be many of us, because come on 2020 or not… it’s Christmas & who doesnt love a buffet!!)
Roseanne Byford 