cooking shenanigans... and jelly building

I thought I'd best post on Christmas before re-jumping into the new year.

I had visions of our holiday being so relaxing, like we could just stop running around like mad things and breathe a bit. I forgot that after running around like said mad things for so long, it's often likely that you get sick when you stop. Which Tom did. Not fun for him. And teething ramped up a notch for Xi. Not fun for him.

But we were still on holiday, and much hilarity ensured.

I decided I had the time to be in the kitchen properly, and took advantage of the babysitting of nana and poppy to bake. Unfortunately I wasted my cooking zeal on a new type of cake recipe (make a sugar syrup and whip egg whites... never done it that way before) which promised moist, but I found a bit dry or bland or something that doesn't live up to the process of the making, spiral biscuits, you know the ones, chocolate dough, cinnamon dough, layer them on top of one another, roll and cut...... terrible recipe again, waaaaaay too short, thought they were going to melt in the steamy humidity while I was attempting to roll them up, and then melt into black buttery splatter in the oven. Surprisingly they didn't (melt and smoke that is) but after a time in the freezer, they weren't round anymore, instead we got crazy spirals which looked cool, but tasted quite bland, and to add insult to injury, after they were initially eaten, the bottle got forgotten in the cupboard, and the rest of the biscuits went to the scrub turkeys as a holiday treat.

All this disappointing baking happened in one day after weeks of thinking about cooking and what I'd do if I had the time. All I can say is, make a favourite recipe first, or else you'll just despair.

Thank goodness for jelly.

I love making layered jelly, not that excited about eating it, but stripe making is fun. So I volunteered to do the Christmas trifle - individual build your own - style.

Here's a pic of my mum 'supervising' my cousins in the plonking of chocolate cake (beautifully cut out by Kayt with cookie cutters) on top of the jelly.

And here is the 5 star jelly in a plastic cup. Four layers of jelly, one with fruit in it, and a top of chocolate mousse (that was my favourite bit) A bit of cake, and then add your own cream, custard and ice cream. It started out for the kids only, then we figured everyone would like a jelly cup, and I heard that one uncle had the remaining four left over for breakfast the next morning.....

As much as jelly layering is fun, thank goodness for garden produce.

I try and try to grow basil down here to no avail, but at my parents, mum's got bushes of it, and yet there was no pesto in sight.......
We might have got them addicted to it after this harvest got pesto-sised! I started out just picking some for a small bit of pesto, then decided I mose well get rid of all the flowers and then ended up with a pile this big! That's a lot of pesto for someone who is proud of being able to pick five leaves at a time!