Monday 12 December 2016

CHRISTMAS FAIR | STONOR PARK

With a massive hangover, I met up with a couple of girls that I used to work with and headed down to Henley to the Stonor Park Christmas Fair.

It's the first time i've ever been to a christmas fair (other than Winter Wonderland) and I was really impressed. It was all really well done. Stonor House is a beautiful big manor house which we were able to walk around. We were restricted as to where we could go when we were inside, but they're decorated it all christmassy an historic. It was stunning.

Sunday 4 December 2016

RECIPE | FRANGIPANE MINCE PIES

I love baking and I love trying new things, especially when it's a twist on something I already love to bake. I saw this recipe on the countryliving website and because my family love mincepies and anything almond/marzipan flavoured I knew they'd be excited to try these!

200+ MINCE PIES?!

It's become a tradition at Christmas that my mum and I bake over 200 mince pies each year.

"Why so many?" I hear you ask.

My mum is a caretaker/cleaner for a lot of elderly people and instead of buying them all naff gifts we always bake for them - they always appreciate a home made gift! Alongside that, we've always taken them to family get-togethers over christmas as well as each taking some in for colleagues too. On top of all that, we need some for ourselves too right!!

We don't make our own mincemeat (we actually use Sainsburys own brand) but we always mix a teaspoon or so of brandy to give it a little kick! Funnily enough, we also don't follow a recipe for the pastry, it's just something we've made enough to know when it's going to work and when it's not.

Instead of making 200 of the same mincepie, we decided to make 50/50 (ish) of standard pies with a little pastry star and the other half with the spiced orange crumble that we made last year.

Quick tip: If you sprinkle icing sugar over them when they're cool, it covers a multitude of sins!

These are the little ones that didn't pass QA!

I can promise you now that despite having baked over 200 already, we'll have to make more at some point..