Christmas baking!

Wow, as we head out of the Christmas season and towards 2012 I am in serious need of a detox! After going 9 months with very little sweet food/sugar (I lost my sweet tooth while pregnant), and then working hard to lose the baby weight, I had been eating minimal sugar for a while. So right now I think my body is in a bit of a sugar shock!

We started with the pre-Christmas Christmas dinner for the Papps'. We had Pavlova and a fair bit of chocolate (cadbury favourites and truffles).

Next up was morning tea with an IMO work colleague (and fellow kiwi) Fiona. I made a lemon delicious slice (pictured below using one of my new cake stencils) and Fiona bought along some Jam tarts as well.A couple of days later I had a Christmas morning tea at the IMO with my team. My contribution was a hazelnut and orange shortbread filled with a brandy butter cream (I forgot to get a picture of this!). Unfortunately I taste tested far too much of this mix while making it as well as the finished product. At the morning tea there was a huge selection of treats, but I stuck to just one chocolate chip cookie! Seeing as how I had nearly already eaten Ethan's body weight in shortbread haha.

That very same day we had a pre Christmas dinner with our good friends Sandy and Nathan, I had promised Sandy a "healthy" dinner. We did have a healthy dinner... but then for dessert I made a white chocolate mud cake with a white chocolate truffle icing (which tasted like the filling of the while choc lindt balls). We served this with double cream, vanilla bean ice cream and raspberries! It was a pretty awesome cake and one that I will make again (for special occasions).
So... then it was onto the Christmas day baking (while snacking on leftover mud cake... hmmm where had my willpower gone!). We were heading out to a friend from mother's group for Christmas lunch and I had offered to take dessert. First up I made my never fail chocolate, cheesecake and raspberry brownie (times two as there were 25 people to feed for dessert) and following this was the trusty pavlova, only this time it didn't work! Arghhhhhhhh. So at 8.30pm on Christmas Eve I went in search of more caster sugar... only to realise an hour later I was also short 2 eggs. Jason very kindly went on an egg rescue mission for me! I whipped up another pav on Christmas morning! No pictures of these desserts though as Christmas day ended up being too busy, but they were a hit at lunch and we were lucky enough top be able to leave the leftovers at Chelsea's house!

So after a fortnight of decadence its back into a little hard work and healthy eating to get back on track. Although I lost weight over the last few months I have a couple more kgs I would like to lose to be totally back into my pre-baby clothes. So no more desserts at Eldorado st for a wee while!