Christmas Day 2016

Hey all!

I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas - I planned on getting some posts up in time for the Christmas period but it didn't happen because of so much food prep being required for the big day! You'll see what I mean below....

I spend Christmas with my family and pretty much move home for the Christmas break, even though I don't live at home any more I still end up decorating the house too, particularly the trees!

I love doing it but now I have my own and often do the ones in work it can mean decorating up to seven! I do love decorating the fireplace though, the lights and candles seem to make it!

Christmas Eve was spent in the kitchen, I honestly spent over 8 hours in there making various things. We pre cooked the turkey in the oven and the ham in the slow cooker. The ham was then put into the oven with a honey and mustard glaze on top to crisp up - it was amazing!

We also made the pretty popular Nutella Christmas tree, this was fun and really easy for such an effective treat.

All you need to do is roll out the pastry, cut it into a tree shape - I found it easiest to put them together and cut the shape first so they were both matching.
Then you need to spread a thick layer of Nutella onto one piece and top with the other. I also filled the off cuts too, I mean those extra bits almost taste better than the main tree right?

Then you just need to cut slices of equal size into the sides and twist upwards to give a better effect. It smells amazing when it's cooking away in the oven and we just dusted some icing sugar on top for some festive snow.

This tree is dangerous as you can so easily just keep pulling off a branch here and there!

After this we made some gingerbread men and I iced them very haphazardly - I attempted to do some bow ties and dresses but they look like they've had quite a few glasses of wine instead...oops!

For the main desserts we made the James Martin cheesecake (recipe can be found on Asda's website) which was a really easy no bake recipe, and covered with macaroons from the frozen section. We also decided that seeing as it was Christmas we'd also smother it in edible glitter and sparkly sugar, it was so easy and a big hit!

Lastly we made a chocolate torte, this was the BBC Good Food recipe. It was about 9pm by the time we started this so we were pretty tired but once the mixture was done it only took 40 minutes in the oven to cook and we had earned a big cup of tea and a sit down by then.

Christmas Day is my favourite, for the food and also for seeing my dog loving playing with the wrapping paper! He goes mad for it, loves helping people unwrap their presents and then rolling around with the paper afterwards.

My brother bought him a little Santa costume (which he absolutely hated!) but he was too big so it didn't stay on, still cute though!

We went to my aunty's for Christmas Day this year, the table was beautifully decorated with a gingerbread man theme. Isn't it amazing?

I piled my plate high with as much veg as possible (yes I did add gravy after taking this picture for anyone wondering where it is!)

We finished off the day with the obvious games and selfies with props - if you have played His and Hers we played it and even though us females outnumbered the guys we lost miserably!

What did you do Christmas Day? Do you have any traditions that you have to complete every year?

L xxx