Christmas Cooking and Baking

I have a number of allergies, so I decided this Christmas would be the season I finally bake delicious things for myself. I can't eat gluten or eggs, so baking can be bit of a nightmare (and has been utterly heartbreaking most of the time.)

However I've had some success.

The most exciting piece of news pre-Christmas was the delegation of the Xmas ham to my capable hands. Ham is a big deal to me, and the Christmas ham is basically the Academy Awards of ham-making in our house, and this is how it went:

Dance to the beat of my HAYUM.

It was GOOD.


I followed this with a nutella cheesecake made with gluten free digestive biscuits. It was absolutely delicious.

Unfortunately the cheesecake met with a disastrous end after being knocked off its stand by my aunt in law. I won't show you that picture...it's too hard.


I decided then to turn my hand to some pastry - puff pastry. This was gas craic, pummelling a pound of butter into the dough, turning it 4,5,6 times and then dividing it into two batches, one of which I froze. With this, so far, I have made sausage rolls:

Stephen's Day Pie (turkey, ham, mushroom and onion pie):

and Vol Au Vents:

I have a load still left in the freezer.

I also had a mad urge for something I haven't had in a long time - sponge cake. This is NOT an easy thing to make when you can't use eggs or gluten but with a little experimentation with liquids etc I threw this one together. You'll notice it's not very big - the rise with non-gluten and non-egg based recipes is not as good but the texture of this cake was perfect. Wonderfully spongey and soft.

Today I had a mad urge for a scone so I threw some of them together, they are very very good:

And using the same recipe for the sponge cake above, I've made these beauties and have iced them using a very basic glace icing. Nom nom. Beauties is an unusual word to describe them alas, as they are incredibly ugly. I even left the really ugly ones (if you can pinpoint them) in this picture as I felt bad. I'm no good with presentation at all - and as long as they're delicious and they're only for me, why should I be? ;)

I've had a very delicious Christmas this year, and I'm really dreading stepping on to the scales once the party officially stops (I'm not back in the office until Tuesday, Christmas holidays until then! :D)


The cakes above come from a number of different sources, a lot of which are adapted, including:

http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/nutella-cheesecake

www.glutenfreeonashoestring.com

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/eggless_sponge_cake_70634

http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/23618/simple-homemade-scones.aspx