Boxing Day with the twits

We had our orphan's Christmas lunch food marathon this year with the usual suspects this year, which left my sisters (aka The Twits) to their own devices for the day. To make up for the fact that we "Ruined their Christmas" by not spending it together, Neil and I had them round for Boxing Day lunch.


We knew straight away what we were going to serve:

• Cherry tomato, bocconcini & pesto tartlets
• Neil Perry's succulent chicken with tzatziki (from Good Food)
• Spinach, walnut, goats cheese and pomegranate salad with lemon vinaigrette
• And Lee bought around her specialty - vegetarian couscous salad.

And what's Christmas (or Boxing Day) without a decadent sweet treat like Blueberry cheesecake!

Post-dinner (and once the food had settled a bit) we headed down to Double Bay for a kick around with Neil's new football. It was a great day!

Gingerbread: Take 2

I'm stubborn when it comes to cooking and wasn't about to be beaten by something as simple as gingerbread... so the first thing I did when I woke up this morning was to make the liquid base. Then during our weekly trek to the supermarket a few hours later I picked up a lamington tin... this was a round I was going to win!

Since gingerbread batter is so thick, I made sure that this time when I tested the cake for doneness I put the skewer in horizontally through a crack in the top. I found that even with the shallower pan, it still had a bit more to go, and I ended up adding 15 minutes to the cooking time.

Round 1 result vs Round 2 result

The cake was lighter than expected and the cinnamon sprinkled on top (which I was going to leave out) was 'the icing on' the icing on the cake. I don't think this is going to last long in the tin...