Love Came Down at Christmas by Christina Rosetti

 

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love incarnate, love divine;
Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love shall be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and to all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign

I'm getting there...

 

A Renaissance Nativity Painting for this time of year

 

A lovely painting But that baby is not new born – just saying!

A Kiwi Christmas favourite - a pav (or pavlova)

 

Here is another festive food that can't with honesty be described as a recipe.

 

Ingredients:

 

Store bought pavlova base (meringue)

Cream

Icing sugar

Vanilla essence

Strawberries

Blueberries

 

Method:

 

Whip your cream (plus vanilla and sugar) to softly mounding. Slather it on top of your pavlova.

 

Add your slices, chunks of berries – and that's it.

 

The pavlova was crunchy on the outside and soft and marshmallowy in the middle.  Very sweet but then it's a treat.

Christmas trees!

 

Merry Christmas to all!

 

Hope your Christmas went well

 

Merry Christmas, everyone!

 

Wishing us all a blessed Christmas

Wishing everyone a happy Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas to Everyone - especially book lovers...

Giving you the essence of our family Christmas – Cherry Log

This Christmas treat was inaugurated by my mother years and years ago.  My version is a bit different but equally indulgent.

Ingredients:

Packet of Chocolate Chip biscuits (cookies)

1 cup of cream (double)

2 tblsp icing sugar (powdered sugar)

200g or so of mascarpone

Cherry Brandy (you could substitute brandy and cherry essence)

Vanilla essence

Chocolate for decoration

Method:

Whip the cream and the icing sugar with the vanilla essence – when softly whipped mix in the mascarpone.  My mother's version just used cream which was nice but stayed really soft even after being in the fridge.  The mascarpone meant that the coating was a bit set.

Dip your biscuits into cherry brandy.  This is the only bit of the log that is at all tricky.  You want to dip each one for long enough that it takes up the brandy but not so long that it goes mushy.  I erred on the shorter side which was a bit of a mistake – given that my biscuits were quite thick ones.

You then stick each biscuit to each other with your cream mixture – I did mine vertically before putting it onto its side – this is how you form the log.

Then cover the outside of the log with the rest of the cream mixture and ut your chocolate decorations on.  Traditionally we would have just had grated chocolate but I saw these fabulous little stars and bought them (and they were expensive too)

You can't serve this log straight away – it needs at least 4 hours in the fridge for the cherry brandy to work its way through the biscuits.

Not diet food but great as a Christmas treat.

PS  If you want to make a kid friendly version of this you could use cherry juice/ essence or dilute the cherry brandy with water.