Happy 2012!!!

I hope everyone had a lovelee Christmas Season filled with family, friends, love, food and laughter.

I have been on vacation since December 23rd and it has been amazing.  I wouldn't say things have been relaxing though.  With 3 family Christmases to fit into 2 days, plus all the other gatherings, things have been busy.  As Derek and I were grudgingly getting ready for what felt like our 10th party we stopped and reminded each other of how fortunate we are to have this many friends and family around us during the holidays.  So even though Christmas can be crazy and I'm glad it only happens once a year, I am so grateful to have such great friends and family nearby to share the season with.

So other than eating/drinking 5 times the amount of calories per day I am supposed to and driving all over the city to various parties and get-togethers we did take some time to enjoy a couple PJ days and Pizza Parties! Yes, Pizza Parties!

This past Friday afternoon I invited my brother Keenan, sister Danielle, cousin Dean, and friend Cassie over for a pizza party.  It was so much fun!  I pre-made personal size pizza dough for everyone and prepared all the toppings I could think of.  We had:

• pizza sauce
• basil pesto
• pepperoni 
• chicken
• ham
• pineapple
• green pepper
• mushroom
• sun dried tomatoes
• tomatoes
• red and white onions
• jalapeno pepper
• goat cheese
• mozzarella cheese 

I think that covers it!  The next step was shaping our dough into a Christmas shapes.  I was really impressed with everyone's creativity and pizza shaping and topping talents.  Here were our final products.  I had to snap these pictures quickly - everyone was very anxious to taste their creations!

Danielle's Hawaiian candy cane

Dean's half pizza sauce, half pesto based Christmas bell

Keenan's meaty snowman

Cassie's cheesy Christmas tree and gift

My pesto based Christmas wreath

Danielle's Christmas holy (we shared this one)

The pizza dough recipe I used was just the one on the back of the jar of yeast.

Here she is:

Combine the following ingredients in a large bowl

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 1/4 tsp yeast
• 1 1/2 tsp sugar
• 3/4 tsp salt 

Add 2/3 cup of very warm water and 3 tbsp oil.  Mix until well blended; about 1 minute.  Add enough all-purpose flour to make a soft dough (3/4 - 1 1/4 cups).  The dough should form a ball and will be slightly sticky.  

Knead on a floured surface adding additional flour if needed, until smooth and elastic; about 4 minutes.

After I had created a nice dough ball, I split it into 2 individual balls and let them rise for about 30 minutes while I waited for my guests to arrive.  

Bake at 425 on the lowest oven rack for 12-15 minutes until the cheese is bubbly and crust is browned.  I repeated the recipe 4 times and ended up with 8 individual dough balls.  I ended up freezing the unused dough and am hoping it turns out alright - I'll letcha know.

I thought the pizzas turned out really great and everyone agreed that the dough was very tasty.  I would suggest preparing your pizzas directly on parchment paper and placing the pizza and parchment paper on your baking sheet.  This makes transferring the pizzas from the prep surface to baking sheet and onto the plate much easier.  

I think we will make this a yearly Christmas time tradition.  It's super simple to make the dough ahead of time and prep all the toppings before people arrive.  I also think this is a great idea for child's birthday party.  It would be fun to think of a theme (animals, dinosaurs, flowers, trains/plains/automobiles, or even letters to create initials) and then have party guests make their own custom pizza.

Did anyone else create some new holiday traditions this year?  Any pizza toppings I forgot and need to add to my list for next year?

Happy January 1st everyone!!!

Junior

Junior - it's what we have named our Christmas tree this year.  Maybe we have a thing for naming items in our home?  We picked her up at the corner of Montreal Rd and St Laurent Blvd in Vanier.  Yea, I just said that....

I think the whole process of selecting the tree and getting her in the car took about 30 seconds.  It was hilarious.  We parked the car, walked into the roped off area with all the trees, tried to negotiate a price for about 5 seconds (we only had $40 cash), looked at 2 trees, chose the second one and left....probably without getting a deal.

It might have  had something to do with the fact that we had a fresh pizza from Louis' in the car.  In our opinion, Louis' has the BEST pizza in the world.  If you haven't been, you have to go.  Our favourite is half Hawaiian and half combination on thin crust.

Anyways, we love her and I couldn't wait to get her in the door and decorate her!  I think Derek could sense my excitement and kindly allowed me to take the lead on decorating our tree this year.  What a guy....or maybe he was just more interested in the pizza....

Over the past couple weeks I have been (secretly) collecting ornaments over my lunch hour...mostly from the Zellers downtown on Sparks St.  Do you know how cheap and pretty their ornaments are?  Not to mention I also discovered that they carry an Alfred Sung line of clothing and I picked up a couple tops for under $15 each!

The colour scheme I was going for this year was silver sparkles with mostly pink and some green ornaments.  We have a lot of purple in our home decor right now, so it fit right in.  

It took us a few minutes to get her set up in the tree stand - I will admit this was somewhat stressful.  Then I poured way too much water in the base and we had a mini flood.  But that was after we had to remove some bottom branches with my brand new Cuisinart scissors.

She is only 5 feet tall, so she fits in the apartment perfectly.  I love the way she turned out and the glow coming from the white lights.  It makes everything so cozy.  

One of my favourite new additions are the matching love birds I placed at the top underneath my disco ball star.  

I was trying to experiment with the settings on my camera to get the best picture.  I actually found some of the best pictures came from my phone.

Putting up the Christmas tree is definitely a key activity in getting into the Christmas spirit.  I've been to a few parties so far this December, including Derek's work party at Le Chateau Laurier this past Saturday (amazing), but I'm finding it difficult to get in the mood without snow.  I am really hoping for a white Christmas and some cooler temperatures so that the outdoor rinks can freeze...not to mention the canal.  If it's going to be cold and dark outside all winter, I at least want to be able enjoy some winter activities!  You with me?!

I hope everyone is having a really great Christmas season so far....do you guys have your trees and decoration up yet?

The dessert exchange

Do you guys participate in Christmas dessert exchange parties?  This is somewhat of a new concept to me.  Until a few years ago I had not heard of the "dessert exchange" and I don't remember my mom participating in them when I was growing up.

First of all, just so everyone knows - I am not a skilled baker - unlike my best friend Ashley, who is the go-to-girl for cakes and cupcakes.  See some of her talented work here...

monkey cupcakes for her sister's baby shower

safari animal cupcakes for her nephew's birthday party

a birthday cake for the biggest Bruin's (or maybe just Chara) fan I know

So, even though I am not necessarily the best baker (nor am I really a fan of baking), for the past few years I have participated in the annual Shanonna Christmas Exchange.  Hosted by my friends Shanon and Donna of course.  It's always a blast, and the dessert exchange is really secondary to all of the Christmas celebrating that is going on.  Fine by me- maybe people won't realize that my contribution is less than desirable.  

This year we are baking for 22 people.  YES, 22!!!  It's crazy.  Thankfully, my mom took pity on me (I've had a few baking disasters in the past) and invited me to spend a Saturday afternoon with her where she would basically hold my hand and walk me through baking a million 132 sugar tarts.  I was so relieved.  

My mom is an excellent baker.  This is her recipe book.  I think it's about 30 years old. One day we'll have to go through it and make sure we can preserve all our favourite recipes.  

Here's the recipe we followed.  Half English, half French.  (Just like me!)  Hardly any instructions were written down, my mom seems to just know what to do in her head.  This always impresses me.

We started with the pastry shell. 

I combined  

• 1 package Crisco
• 5 cups flour

Using a butter knife, I "cut" the Crisco into the flour.  If you don't know what I'm talking about check out this video.  The person in the video is using a pretty fancy utensil, but I found the butter knife worked out fine.  Basically, you want the end product to be sort of crumbly.

Then I added 

• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon vinegar

into a measuring cup and beet it together.  Once it's mixed together well, fill the measuring cup with cold water until it reaches the 1 cup mark.

To roll out the pastry, I made a ball which was about the size of a grapefruit and placed it on the clean and "floured" surface.  I rolled out the pastry, trying to get it as thin as possible (you don't want really doughy tarts).  Then, using a drinking glass with flour around the rim, I cut out as many circles as I could.  This was pretty fun.

After cutting my circles I filled my ungreased mini-muffin tins with the pastry shells.  They don't need to be perfect, I think the imperfections give the tarts character. 

To make the sugar filling, I combined

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 drop vanilla
• 1 tablespoon water

After mixing the filling together really well, I used a glass measuring cup with a spout to pour the mixture into my tart shells.  I filled them about 3/4 of the way.  This amount of sugar filling only fills about 8 tarts, you can choose to double/triple the recipe if you like. 

Then you pop them in the oven for about 18-20 minutes at 375 and wait for your little tarts to turn a nice, golden brown.  I freaked out a bit when I saw the filling puffing up as they baked - I thought they were going to explode.  But once they came out of the oven and cooled down the filling settled.

mmmm, just look at that gooey sugar filling.....melts in your mouth

I'm pretty impressed!  With my tarts and the fact that I took these picture with my phone.

I packaged them up in a large winter boot box with wax paper.  They are currently stored in my freezer until Saturday when will I create 22 individual packages that hopefully look something like this: 

Apparently the tarts can stay in the freezer for a few months a be a-ok as long as they are stored well.  And don't even think about the nutritional info for these tarts.  It's basically all crisco and sugar...enough said.

This recipe makes about 8 dozen mini tarts.  And you will need to make roughly 12 batches of the filling.

Hopefully the ladies enjoy them.  I'm really looking forward to the stash I will be coming home with.  Derek might be more excited.  

Anyone else participating in these crazy dessert exchanges?  Anyone have awesome recipes they want to share?

Until next time!