december baking

over the couple of weeks leading up to the christmas break (yah) i've tied on the apron and baked a few delights for my colleagues at work (who double as my guinea pigs).

we started off with a lemon drizzle cake...

then an orange, ginger, almond fruit cake. gluten free so it was touch and go for a minute but everyone LOVED it. hmmm.. mooshed fruit cake really.

next up was the chocolate peppermint tart. quite delicious and extremely funny trying to remove rice from blind baking the pastry. glad no one was there to see the hilarity.

then chocolate coconut macaroons, which led to a discussion between macarons and macaroons. the world is crazy at the moment for the colourful macarons, but i quite like these.

 last night's effort took a little time as there were four trays of baking different sizes of stars before the piping and the stacking....

gingerbread christmas trees. fiddly work but fun as i was playing the stardust station on the radio and singing along. good times.

 this is the christmas tree i have again for this year, and the piles of presents i have to fit into a suitcase and carry safely to the west side of the country. in TWO sleeps time... wooohoooo! so excited.

i know... i know.. it's been FOREVER

but i've got important news to tell. i have a new niece. she was born early hours of this morning, so she's a december 6 baby. not at all monkey-ish like her sister was, and she is very, very cute. not biased as i have confirmation from a non-related source. i keep on calling her a she because i don't know her name.

there's three hours difference between melbourne and perth so i can't wake up the family to see if they've named her yet. so for the time being she's the newbie niece, she and her.

this photo was taken by my mum at some ungodly hour while i was asleep. mmm... sleep. anyway, hope my sister doesn't mind too much but i'm going to brag like i had something to do with the entire event. world, this is my new niece.....

(on other news, i might be back again - we'll see).