Happiness is...

Happy Belated Merry Christmas everyone. I hope you all had a wonderful time with your family and had special times. My family is relaxing right now. The kids had a ball but we were so exhausted after the first bbq lunch. Then we had to go to my mums afterwards for dinner. Next year we have decided to do dinner a bit earlier. Perhaps Christmas Eve. We had lots of rain this year again. I remember last year the rain had stopped so we could have dinner but this year we ferried to the garage (where dinner was set up) and the main house with umbrellas.

I made this wreath cake. It was a mud cake and I couldn't find any bundt cake tins (can you believe it?). So I just cut out the middle. There was much fun to be had and lots of quoting from My Big Fat Greek Wedding :"What is it?" "It's a bundt" "A bont, a bobt, ... Oh it's a cake..... with a hole in it!"

I finished the ganache in the morning (never doing that again) and it came out lumpy/curdled. I initially thought it was the cream but as it turns out and with help from the internets, if you use more than 50% cocoa in the dark choc you are melting you'lll curdle it with the cream. What's the fix? Add more cold cream and stir until your ganache is smooth! It really works!!! Truly.

Happiness is actually having buttermilk for pancakes, for once. Tasted pretty good but not as fluffy. At least my eldest girl said these are the best pancakes ever! Will have to search for a really good recipe or buy those pancake shakes. Found out that using the 1/4 cup scoop is very handy to make equal medium sized pancakes in the pan.

Loving this mango, prawn and avocado salad we had for Christmas. It was well worth the effort. I peeled the cold cooked prawns but my other sis in laws peeled the mangos and avocados. I'll never get over eating prawns but they can get expensive this time of year.

Happiness is also recieving this from my sister. I am loving this bag. Perfect size and colours. I was looking for a medium size bag for myself and of course, I didn't have to buy myself one! My sister is suffering from a bit of graft vs host disease at the moment. She is ok but her taste buds are not behaving and she is now diagnosed with diabetes, type 2. So, figure that out, the Leukaemia is gone but she has diabetes. We'll keep praying that she gets back to good health very soon. She is in good spirits though and we were happy that she had a nice Christmas with us.

Anyway, we're still grazing on left-overs so not much cooking happening. Yay for me! But there's still washing and ironing and I'm still waiting on my fancy iron to arrive. Will talk more about that later. 

Hope you all are having a happy holiday.