Merry Christmas and a recipe to share.

Firstly

I would like to wish you all a wonderful festive season filled with joyful moments, great memories to treasure, plenty of laughter with friends and family and a time of replenishing, restoring and reflecting on the year about to end.

Thank you for being such fabulous customers and supporting Koko Vanilla in 2009. I have loved all the customer feedback and emails and comments on kits and products and service.

I absolutely love what I do, creating and designing kits and sourcing first class supplies and offering quality customer service.

Without the support of my customers this wouldn't be possible so I am truly grateful!

I look forward to an even bigger and better year in 2010.

Secondly

I really wanted to get on here and show you all a traditional favourite recipe of mine which I make every Christmas. I have never shared it here on the blog and I though it would be nice. I purchased all the ingredients a few days ago and meant to make them and post the instructions then but well, I have been making them over the last couple of days and finally finished them today. By the way they are really yummy, but I am trying to be good this year as I have worked hard to loose a few kilos the last 3 months and dont want to undo it all over Christmas so not overeating and keeping up the exercise is on the agenda this silly season for me.

These are easy to make no baking involved, its sort of like the cheats way of making them but yummy all the same. Makes a great gift too. Now some of the photos were taken in the evening becuase that was the only time I had to start making these so sorry if the photos are not that good.

Here goes

Mini Plum Puddings

First you will see in the picture below all the ingredients you need. Of course you can add anything extra that you like to this recipe, nuts, more dried fruit, etc etc.

Ingredients two packets of christmas Fruit cake I use the coles brand as you end up adding lots to it so its fine. I usually also buy a dark and light cake and mix them in together, I like the combination but you can do either one only if you prefer. 2 - 3 bags of milk choc melts, you can use the block chocolate as well and you can use dark chocolate also, but we like the milk chocolate around here so that's why I purchased that one. One bag of white chocolate. Alchohol of your preference I used rum and a little sweet sherry, use about 3 tbsp in total of the alcohol otherwise its too strong once again optional and you could use brandy if that's what you have or something nutty like frangelico, choice is yours. Some desicated coconut and some glace cherries and then I had some green sprinkles so I added those as well, but you could buy any soft green lolly like the spearmint leaves and chop them up to make them look like leaves on the puddings.

Now here is the fun part open the cakes up and crumble them together and mix them up. Add to this 1/2 cup of the coconut, the liquor and I added because I had some in the cupboard some chopped up dried cranberries. If you have chosen to add chopped nuts or anything else now is the time to add that also. Mix it all up together, the liquor will make it a little soggy so that it sticks together. Now roll up little balls of the mixture pressing them together until it sticks and make it round like a ball. Did I forget to mention this is a hands on project, oh well getting your hands dirty and creating in the kitchen will save you years of therapy bills (so they say)! Sorry have to throw in some jokes, after all if you were in my kitchen and I was teaching you how to make these I would be throwing in the odd joke in true Anna style. It looks like this before you roll it up into balls.

Now that you have rolled them up into balls melt all your milk chocolate I usually do it in the microwave for 1 - 2 min depending on your microwave. If unsure do it small amounts of time so you don't burn the chocolate. I add a tsp of oil in before I melt, not sure why I do this I am sure I learnt it somewhere and have always done it. Optional of course.

Once the chocolate is melted get a spoon and pop each little ball in the melted choc coating using a finger from one hand and a spoon to get it back out of the chocolate and then place the balls all on baking paper on a tray so they don't stick. They should look like the picture below. Make sure you melt the chocolate in a deep small container as you need to be able to dip the whole ball in. Now I know they are not perfectly round, but it doesn't really bother me because once you decroate it all it looks great. If you are a perfectionist and have lots of time on your hands by all means make them all perfecly round.

Now pop them in the fridge so the chocolate goes hard, if you are in a hurry pop them in the freezer to harden more quickly. Once that is done melt your white chocoalate, chop up the glace cherries into 1/4s and then spoon some of the white chocolate on top, (by the way don't melt the white chocolate too much just as long as its melted it needs to be thick and runny not thin and runny otherwise it falls straight down the sides and isn't thick. It's meant to look like custard on a pudding. Spoon a little white chocolate on top, spread it a little and then it will slowly drizzle down the sides, if it drizzles straight down it is too runny just wait for it to cool and harden, then continue. Straight away add you decorations on top glace cherry etc so that it sticks on top as the white choc hardens. That's it, its all done. Easy Peasy. It makes heaps I didn't count how many but at least 20.


Well I hope you have finished all your shopping. I did the last of mine this morning at 8.00am at Chaddy. I had a couple more things to purchase, so I decided to brave the crowds. Actually it wasn't too busy at that time, quite nice really I left by 10.30 am so I wasn't sure how busy it was after that but I did hear they had record crowds through the night.

Anyway I need to go and get some pressie wrapping done and organise some platters for Christmas Drinks with friends this evening.

Have a lovely day tomorrow!
Love and Light to all!
Anna xx