Cooking recipes

My Christmas decorations went up yesterday, the earliest Ive ever put them up, and today I made Uma Wyldes Spiced Cranberry Relish it was really easy to make, I made four times the recipe using 600g of fresh cranberries. Of course I had to have a little taste and it is delicious, not too sweet and lovely spicy flavours.

I also made some Shortbread Biscuits. My mum makes these every Christmas, she used to make up a box full for my Grandpa who really loved them. I usually make them too as they are easy to make and melt in your mouth.

Here is the recipe I use, you must use butter its what makes the shortbread so delicious.


300g (10oz) plain flour
100g ( 4oz) caster sugar
200g (8oz) butter
caster (superfine) sugar for dredging

1. Sift the flour into a bowl and add the sugar. Work in the butter with your fingertips - keep it in one piece and gradually work in the dry ingredients. Knead well.
2. Pat down on a work surface and use a rolling pin to roll the dough to about 1/2 cm (1/8 in) and cut out with a cookie cutter. You will probably have to keep pushing the dough back together again as it is very crumbly.
3. Slide the cut biscuits off the work surface with a knife and onto a baking sheet.
4. Bake in the oven at 170C (325F) Mark 3 for about 8 minutes until firm and pale golden brown.
5. Lift onto a cooling tray with a spatula and dredge with caster (superfine) sugar.

You need a 20cm x 30cm rectangle of good quality wrapping paper or a triple layer of tissue paper.  If using the wrapping paper, create a tear line to ensure a clean break, the tissue paper is fine enough to tear by itself.


Take 2 cardboard toilet rolls and cut one of them in half.  Line up the three rolls at the opposite end to the cracker snap.  Glue the paper and staret to roll the paper around them, making sure the paper is held securely by the glue.

The Christmas Cracker joke comes from Activity Village where you can download a whole sheet of child friendly jokes.  My gift is a little tube of Cath Kidston Bluebell Shower Gel and I had saved the gold foil hats from some crackers from a couple of years ago (I know, but we crafters keep everything!) anyway twist and tie one end of your cracker and fill with the gift, hat and joke.  Then tie off the other end.


I used some wired ribbon to tie off the ends of my cracker and make a layer of the red tissue to go round the centre of the cracker.  You will see my decoration for the cracker is a little different to the finished one.  I played around with various paper flowers, small holly leaves and berries, ribbons, and doilies.  In the end I felt that the decoration as seen above was just to big for the cracker, so removed the green layer, doily and bow.



I think it works much better as a smaller decoration.  If you dont have a stash of paper flowers and bits and pieces, then you can decorate with small festive images or simply add some glitter.


Remember you can get the complete instructions from CartridgeSave or like their Facebook Page to see more Christmas crafts and competitions.


Im entering this cracker for No Croutons Required Festive Photograph over at Tinned Tomatoes