Christmas - I Love This Season

Merry Christmas!

I love the Christmas period. I love selecting and wrapping gifts, and I mean really love it. There's something about making the wrapping neat and tidy, getting the corners right and decorating the present that I love. I'd happily work as a gift wrapper.

The other day I walked past the charity gift wrappers in the shopping mall and I was like "that's crazy, why would you want to pay someone to take away the fun" and I seriously meant it. I'd happily hand over a donation instead of missing out on wrapping my gifts. I may have a slight gift wrapping problem ;)

Next year I want to set up a traditional tree and a book tree too. How awesome are these?

I haven't had much time to blog much lately. David and I are sorting out our engagement party (including a long saga over printing out the invites), and we've been meeting with mortgage brokers and looking at potential wedding venues. It's all been very hectic (and to be honest quite stressful). I'll be glad when we don't have so much on our plates.

We are basically ready to buy a house now though (very exciting!), so just waiting on the right house at the right price.

How to Turn a Disaster Into a Success

I recently made chocolate banoffee pie for some friends. All was going fine, my pastry wasn't perfect but it was very passable and it was all coming along nicely until the cream incident.

Since I'm a lazy cook, I put my cream into the mixmaster and stepped away to chop up the chocolate. I looked across a couple of times and it was still happily whipping, when all of a sudden liquid starts flying out of my mixmaster, and in my bowl was buttermilk and butter.

I couldn't believe that I'd just made butter. Historically butter was challenging to make, and involved a lot of time and effort. Without even trying, I'd made it and with my last full tub of cream too :(

my newly made butter - draining the liquid

I made an SOS call to my nanna who told me it couldn't be saved. Both of us were laughing so hard on the phone that we could barely talk. My Nanna told me if I drained the butter to get the buttermilk out of it I could possibly use the butter.

Luckily I had a half a container of cream in the fridge so my dessert could still be saved, and despite the huge mistake it turned out quite nicely.

 The finished product - Chocolate Banoffee Pie

The next day David and I felt like making pancakes for breakfast. One of the key ingredients listed was butter, so I got to use my new creation.

Melting the butter

 Finished product - rosewater and strawberry pancakes. With a drop of butter.

In conclusion, homemade butter is awesome! It turns out that it wasn't such a bad mistake to make.