It's been a busy, but not harried, Christmas season. Funny to hear Christmas music being played in stores while seeing Chinese New Year clothes and goodies on display. Chinese New Year does come early next year. Orange season, which I missed this year.

With April I made:

Butter Cookies (out of a Donna Hay magazine)

at first we used the festive Christmas cookie cutters, but when April was packing up to go I became lazy and took the easy way out. 

which tasted like those Danish butter cookies sold in those round tins. The dough was suspiciously soft at first, so we added more flour, but they still turned out okay.

There was also the

Deep Chocolate Sour Cream Pound Cake (from Tisch Boyle's the Cake Book via chubbyhubby.com)

this was a heavy heavy cake. and we also got to test my new cake carrier (not shown).

which had an amazing full 500g of sugar and we had to drive out to get sour cream. This was an opportunity to use my new silicon bundt pan. We didn't eat this because it was meant for her pastor, but when she went home the cake got broken so she didn't give it away.

Finally, there was

Banana Cake with Bailey's (from How to be...)

One batch was baked in April's paper cups and looked very professional; the second batch was made into a shallow loaf cake. 

which, again, just reeks of Bailey's Creme Caramel but is quite addictive due to the plump raisins dotting the cake.

I didn't make anything specially for Christmas itself, but I made desserts for two parties that I was going to after Christmas day. First was

Cranberry Upside Down Cake (from How to be...)

It does look like the picture in the book, only that the rest of the cake doesn't have cranberries showing because they sunk and disappeared into the batter. 

for which the sugar syrup was a failure because it became caramel and then hardened in the pan, thus failing to soak the sour cranberries. So it was tart. No it's cake. I think the cinnamon in the cake itself was a bit too strong as well. The cranberries also sunk into the cake so you couldn't really see the cranberries on the top, except on one side.

In order to save the people who didn't like sour stuff (and to use up all the other cranberries, I also made

Cranberry Curd (from How to be...) 

what a strange colour: I think cerise is the better word, not magenta

to drizzle over the cake. It was quite a messy experience, having to mash/puree the cranberries and the bowls and my hands really looked quite bloody. But after that we have three nice jars of curd in a rather absurd shade of pinkish red. And it is not sour. But the party I brought it to had an awfully chocolate chocolate cake there too. Which sounds a lot more appealing than cranberry cake, don't you think?

And for a party the next day, I made

Love Those Lemon Dreams (from BSCC)

looks normal... but underneath it is sad.

but the crust dough wasn't crumbly like it usually is, so I added more flour, but this made the base super thick, and the lemon topping seamed meagre in comparison. But at least it was lemon. But it wasn't really very nice. :(

And today, I'm making

Madeira Cake (from How to be...) 

which is a rather plain lemony loaf cake. Which I will eat with cranberry curd. And share with Clo as we watch melodramatic Chinese serials tomorrow. It's in the oven now, so that's why there are no photos of it. Yet.