Monday 24 December 2012

Santa Claus is coming to town


Like Santa Claus, I've had a list and managed to tick most things off it. My baking platters are going out with ginger crinkle biscuits, chocolate truffles, shortbread and gingerbread decorations. I have a broken, undecorated decadent chocolate cake in the pantry that I simply ran out of time to decorate. That's ok - we'll enjoy eating the 'crumbs'. It's too hot to decorate the rest of my gingerbread men but I figure that the kids won't miss what they didn't know they were getting anyway.

Our presents have been bought and wrapped, sitting on the fireplace beneath our tiny Christmas tree. My sweetie has marinated a huge pile of chicken nibbles to bring to our various family engagements tomorrow. He also did a good job of marinading his t-shirt, the bench top and our kitchen drawers. ;-)

In a couple of hours, we have a pile of people coming around for homemade pizza and drinks. My little breadmaker has whirred away all day making a dozen pizza bases and I have chopped almost every topping imaginable, ready to assemble and cook once our guests arrive. I even managed to put together some mallowpuff Christmas puddings this morning. One guest popped in earlier with a bottle of sav for me, as he correctly figured I've had a busy day. Good man! Surprisingly, we're fully organised well before the event and the sun is shining - this is not how we usually do parties!

So now it's down to the business end of things and I'm feeling good about where we're at. My hammock seat is up and I'm about to go join it with a cold drink and a book. We're ready for Santa and the four places we need to go tomorrow. Bring it on!

If you've been nice, then keep an eye out for a visit from the fat man.
If you've been naughty ... well, I know you'll get what you deserve. Karma's great like that. :-P

Merry Christmas, everyone! Buon Natale a tutti! Meri Kirimihete!

3 comments:

Ness said...

I am excited about your pizza dough made in your bread maker....don't suppose you want to share the recipe?

:)

Ness

Caffeinated Weka said...

Hi Ness.

I just used the recipe that came with my Panasonic breadmaker:
3 tsp Surebake yeast
450 g high grade flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
5 tbsp olive oil (about 68 g)
230 ml water

Add ingredients in the order listed. Use the pizza dough setting to combine and knead - it takes 45 mins. Remove dough from breadmaker pan and knead on a lightly floured surface until it becomes elastic and bounces back (it doesn't take much kneading) then shape into a ball and leave in a warm place to rest for 10 mins. Roll into a pizza base shape and leave for at least 15 mins until it rises to double the height. Add toppings of your choice (hint: less is more!) and bake for 12-15 mins at 200-210°C.

Baking on a pizza stone didn't work for me but I had lots of success with baking paper on a flat tray. This recipe makes two large pizza bases and they are DELICIOUS!

Ness said...

Woohoo! Awesome. Thank you so much. Going to give it a try! :)