Ginger TARDIS - Happy Holidays!

 I've been playing with youtube lately, learning the ins and outs.  It's a lot of fun and making videos is a lot like learning any craft - it takes a lot of practice.  

So does making good gingerbread sculptures, apparently.  I need a lot more practice.

Here is a great website that reviews many gingerbread building recipes.  I picked one and, as usual, made a few changes.  And then a few more changes, and then the spices were all off, so I changed that too.  Lucky for me I went shopping the day before the deluge and what followed on the Left Coast.  

This is by no means the "right" way to do it, but as you can see, it sort of worked.

Happy Holidays everyone!

**Gingerbread (my wonky recipe)**

1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup lard

1 cup molasses

4 cups all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons ground ginger

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

a few drops of warm water if needed

1.  preheat oven 350F

2. Put sugar, lard, and molasses in a pot on medium.  Stir until melted and blended.

3. Mix remaining dry ingredients (not the water) in a large bowl

4. Pour wet stuff into dry stuff and stir really really really well until your wrist feels like falling off.

5. If still crumbly, add a few drops of warm water and keep on stirring.

6. Roll out 1/4" thick (or desired thickness) and cut into shape.

7. Bake on trays for 10-15 min (12 was the perfect time for mine)

8. Take trays out of the oven.  Let gingerbread cool and harden completely before moving.  

9. Assemble in your favourite way (I use Royal Icing - see below)

**Royal Icing**

3 egg whites

3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 pound icing sugar

1. Put in a bowl and with an electric mixer (if you don't mind your wrist falling off you *can* do this by hand), beat slowly at first.

2. Once everything is mixed together, beat on high for 8-12 min.  You cannot overbeat - I've tried.  If you need the icing to be structural, beat as long as possible.  If not, then 8 min is enough.  You want the peaks to hold up when you lift the beater out of the icing.

3. Add colour if needed - I apparently suck at this and can give you no useful advice on the right way to add colour.  A whole bottle of food dye and I can only get baby blue.  Maybe next year I'll figure it out.

4. Put the icing into a plastic bag or piping bag.  I keep mine in a plastic bag and only cut the tip just before using it.  To store, keep at room temperature.  Use within a few days.

A Fermented Holiday Season starts now

It's that time of year again, time to start thinking about Holiday presents.  This year I've decided that all the adults are getting homemade gifts, mostly food.

It all started with the most recent batch of chickpea miso - best batch so far! - and I thought, this is the type of miso I would be proud to serve my friends (as opposed to my learning batches of miso which were a little bit...um... taste like practice).  If the miso tastes this good, I wonder what other yummy treats I can make.

So here's a list (because these particular friends don't read this blog) of some of the delicious fermented foods I hope to have ready in time for Christmas.

Sweet Miso takes about one month to ferment, but it can be as fast as 3 weeks if I increase the ratio of koji rice to other ingredients.  I have one batch of Chunky Chickpea Miso ready, and plan to put up a batch of Black Turtle and Adzuke Bean with Barley Miso later today.




Kimchi!  Kimchi is awesome in so many ways.  For starters, it is by far the best way to clean out the crisper drawer in the fridge.  You can put (almost) anything in kimchi.  In this case, I used half a daikon, two su choi cabbages, chilis, excessive amounts of ginger sliced thin, Cauliflower, carrots, and anything else vegi related that needed eating up.  Kimchi takes about one week to ferment.



Cultured Butter is easy to make in advance and keeps for ages.  I'll probably start making this a week or two before the Holiday dinner.  Takes one day to culture the cream and the next day to churn it = two days.



With the leftover buttermilk from churning butter, I will bake some bread.  Sourdough Bread loves buttermilk.  With the added dairy sugars the bread will often rise to be lofty and soft, as opposed to the more dense country loaf I make for every-day purposes.  Takes two days to make a great loaf of sourdough, but can be done in one.

Speaking about dairy. my dream is to eventually make my own hard cheese.  Wouldn't it be lovely to give the gift of Cheese?  Even a soft farmhouse style cheese mixed with dry herbs dressed in a beautiful jar or clay pot would be a good addition to a gift basket.  Soft cheese takes a couple of hours, a hard cheese on the other hand can take years.


Of course, you could always spice up your relationship with some hot sauce.  Fermented hot sauce takes about one week, or this one which is ready in two days.


Last but not least, my personal all time holiday favourite:

Cranberry Mead!

The biggest advantages of fermented vs the baked gift, are that fermented gifts last longer, are generally more affordable to make and are a refreshing change from over-indulgence.  They are also an excellent way to use up the last of the harvest.

Gingerbread day

My friends and their little ones came to play.  We made gingerbread.

The kids, 2 and 3 years old helped roll the dough, cut the cookies and decorate with some dried fruit, all under the watchful eyes of mummy.

Ever wonder what to do with those leftover scraps of cookie dough?  Make them into long snakes, then shape them as x and o.