If you follow a raw food diet you literally, only eat raw food. Anything that is heated above 40C is not considered raw. Obviously that means no cooking of food. Less obviously, it also means you cannot eat the majority of milk, cream, yoghurt and chocolate products, as these are all heated above 40C in the manufacturing process.

These regulations rule out most of my favourite desserts so I had to think outside of the box. I often look at recipes on the web and wonder what some of the more unusual food combinations and processes actually taste like.  So rather than putting this months challenge in the “too hard basket” I decided it was time to give it a go. If nothing else it will satisfy my curiosities.

I keep stumbling across recipes for raw chocolate mousse. As dairy is off the menu in a raw food diet, avocado is used to give the dessert the mousse like texture.  Intrigued by eating avocado for dessert, mousse was the answer to the raw food challenge.  I am currently in the early phases of a kitchen renovation and in preparation I am eating my way through the freezer to make space for frozen meals for when I’m kitchen-less.  To create a little more space in the freezer I decided to use some frozen raspberries instead of chocolate.  I adapted a recipe from 84th&3rd and came up with this raspberry mousse.

This mousse is quick and easy to make.  It is a one pot wonder, which is quite unusual for dessert.  And because you can use frozen raspberries it is chilled enough to eat immediately.

And the verdict? It was quite nice. It tasted like a dessert and had the texture of yoghurt. I’m not going to lie though; in a blind taste I would choose a mousse with cream and egg whites every time. I do however have a pretty good recipe up my sleeve if I ever happen to entertain any vegans or raw foodists.

Raw, Vegan Raspberry Mousse (serves 2)

1 ripe avocado
150g frozen raspberries
30g maple syrup
pinch salt
2 mint leaves, finely chopped

Put all of the ingredients into a food processor and blitz until smooth and well combined. The raspberries can be used frozen, but this does slow down the pureeing so you will probably need to scrape down the bowl a couple of times before blitzing again.

Serve immediately with extra raspberries and a sprig of mint or chill in the fridge.

This May Cancer Council are celebrating 20 years of Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea.  This is a great event and an easy way to get involved in raising funds to help Cancer Council continue their great work.

Last week I was lucky enough to be invited to the launch of this years event.  I got to share an indulgent morning tea with 19 other Sydney food and lifestyle bloggers.  Of course we ate, and we chatted, but we also got to hear some interesting information from Cancer Council staff and Ambassadors. Until this event, I hadn’t appreciated the scope of the work Cancer Council do, including providing financial assistance, legal assistance and the more obvious education around prevention and early detection.  There was also a lot of discussion around the benefits of a healthy diet for cancer prevention and treatment, including the interesting link between sugar and cancer.  More photos from this delicious event are on my Facebook page.

Regular readers will know that I have had to make a few diet changes in our house.  It started with high cholesterol but I have since been convinced by the overall benefits of a healthier lifestyle. I also don’t have a particularly sweet tooth, so when it comes to choosing something for morning tea I choose savoury over sweet every time.  Once upon a time my morning tea snack of choice would have been homemade sausage rolls but that’s not the healthiest option around.

Although I cannot profess that this is a healthy snack, I have adapted my sausage roll recipe and morphed it into these pork and leek filo cigars which are a slightly healthier alternative.  Filo pastry is much lower in fat that regular pastry and because it is so thin you often use less of it.  The filling is also lighter than regular sausage rolls as I have used lean pork mince and because it is cooked before going into the pastry you use less meat.  By my calculations each cigar should contain around 120 Calories compared to anything from 250-350 calories in a regular sausage roll.

So what are you waiting for, make your favourite healthy cake, something savoury and sign up for Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea.  The main event is on Thursday May 23rd but you can host a morning tea anytime throughout May or June.  For more information or to sign up checkout Cancer Council’s webpage here.

Pork and Leek Filo Cigars (makes 10)

100g leek (approx 1 small one, white part only)
1 garlic clove
40ml olive oil
200g lean pork mince
6 large sage leaves
a little grated nutmeg or a small pinch of ready ground nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
5 sheets of Filo pastry

Pre-heat the oven to 180C and line a baking tray with baking paper.

Remove the top of the leek (the tough, green leaves) and the roots from the bottom then slice in half length ways. Wash under cold running water to get rid of any dirt. Slice in half length ways again and then slice. Finely chop or crush the garlic. Put 10ml of the olive oil in a frying and and heat to medium. Gently fry the leeks and garlic for 10 minutes until soft and cooked but not brown.  Remove from the pan and set aside.

If needed, add a little bit more oil to the pan (reserving 20ml for later).  Heat to high, add the pork mince and fry until stating to brown and cooked through. This should take about 5 minutes.

Finely chop the the sage leaves and add to the pork mince. Return the leeks to the pan with the pork and stir to combine.  Remove from the heat, season with a little grated nutmeg, salt and pepper. Transfer to another bowl to cool slightly.

Now it’s time to construct the cigars. The first thing to do is treat the filo pastry very gently as you don’t want any holes or rips.  Remove 5 sheets of the pastry and cut them in half.  The cigars take a little while to roll to make sure you put a damp cloth over the sheets of pastry you are not using.

Place one of the cut sheets of filo on the work top longest edge at the bottom. Brush some olive oil on the right half of the pastry then fold in half from left to right.  Place about 20g of your filling at one of the narrow ends of the rectangle leaving about a 2cm border either side.  Tightly start to roll.  After the first turn fold the left and right side into the centre to completely enclose the filling then continue to roll tightly.  When you get to the end of the pastry brush the end of the pastry with oil to seal and place on a baking tray seam side down.  Continue until all filling and pastry has been used up.

Sparingly brush with a little more oil and bake in the pre-heated oven for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned and crispy.  Serve warm or cold.

We are getting to the pointy end of the year of cheese making.  This is the 9th Cheesepalooza challenge and we have made it to the final, advanced chapter of the book.  This months challenge was mould ripened cheese, the common or well known varieties being Brie and Camembert.

I have had some great success making a Camembert style cheese.  Although the first attempts weren’t perfect, they were more than worthy of eating. Then I tried to make some more last month and it failed miserably.  I followed exactly the same recipe that I’ve successfully used before.  It was a last minute make for a dinner party. I had just enough time to ripen the cheese, but not enough time to try it before serving it to my guests.  I broke my golden rule of cheese making: always try the cheese before sharing it with friends.  We cut into the slightly gooey Camembert, my friend took the first bite, and spat it straight back out again.  Somehow it had gone rancid.

Disheartened by last months disaster, I thought I would try something completely different for this challenge.  After perusing the recipes I settled on the Bloomy Robiola. This cheese has a completely different process to any other I’ve made and the part goat’s milk part cow’s milk appealed to me.

This cheese has very little rennet compared to others, this means it takes much longer to form the curd.  The recipe calls for the milk to be kept above room temperature for up to 18 hours, which meant a little clever thinking.  I picked up a great tip from The Cheese Making Workshop.  During their workshop we used a plastic tub paddling in a styrofoam box of warm water.

This method works a treat.  I managed to maintain the correct temperature for 18 hours.  It was difficult to time the making of this cheese so that the curd was ready to be cut at a sociable time of day.  The recipe did say the curd might be ready after 12 hours, but I was asleep at that point so had to let it go for 18 hours.  If I make this again I would ensure I time the making so that I can check it from 12 hours. I think my curd was a little too firm.

I cut the curds into large chunks to make it easier to scoop into the Camembert moulds. The curds then drain, and are flipped, to form a large mass under their own weight.  This was another part of the process that didn’t quite feel right to me.  As the curd was quite firm, it didn’t settle into the moulds as it does when making Camembert.  The curds did however taste delicious.

This is the cheese after it had drained and been flipped.  As you can see it was rather lumpy and had not shrunk as much as I expected it to, or as the book described.  Again I think it was due to the firm curds.

Into the fridge it went, ready to grow it’s layer of mould.  And it did.  I love watching the mould develop; each day as the cheese is flipped there is a little more skin preserving the stinky insides.

Then judgement day arrives. After ten days of ripening it was time to crack open the unknown cheese that is Robiola.  I’ve never tried this cheese so I have nothing to compare it to.  I could guess what it was meant to taste like from the description in the book and sadly I don’t think I achieved it.  It looked great, and the curd tasted fantastic when it was fresh, but yet again this cheese was on the verge of rancid.  I could tell it has potential. It had the acidic hint of a goats cheese; with the earthy tones of a stinky mould ripened cheese; followed by an after taste that left me running to the bathroom.  It also had an interesting, firm but chalky texture.

I think this is another cheese I will have to bin.  I’m not deterred though, as I can see great potential with this one.  I have two things to try to improve on next time.  I will be a little more vigilant with the cutting of the curd and I think I will buy some new starter culture.  I’m wondering if my culture is past it’s best as the common link between the rancid Camembert and the dodgy Robiola is the same batch of starter culture.  Watch this space for the new, improved Robiola.

I love the change in season for two reasons: firstly, I get to dig out a new set of clothes from the back of the wardrobe; secondly, I get to cook a different range of foods.  Move over salad and barbeque, it’s time for winter comfort food.  In Manchester it never got hot enough to worry about putting the oven on, so we enjoyed hearty food all year round, but in Sydney there are many months of the year when I refuse to put the oven on or it is simply too warm for hot food.  This means by April, I’m definitely ready for different foods.  Having said that, by October I’m ready for salads and barbeques again!

To start the comfort food festivities I’ve made some soup.  Not any old soup though, it’s my favourite, comforting, broccoli and blue cheese soup.  I like to use Stilton, as it’s my favourite blue cheese, but you can use any blue cheese you like.  I know blue cheese is not to everyone’s taste but this soup is a winner even if you are not a huge fan of mouldy cheese.  You can vary the amount of blue cheese to suit your taste.  I think 100g is the bare minimum you should use, otherwise you won’t even know it’s there, increase it to 150g or even 200g if you really do like the blue stuff.

Broccoli and Blue Cheese Soup (serves 4)

1 large onion
1 head of broccoli
2 sticks of celery
20ml grapeseed oil
1 litre of good quality chicken or vegetable stock
1 small, floury potato (approx 100g)
100g – 200g Blue cheese, such as Stilton
salt and pepper to taste

Heat a large saucepan on a medium heat.

Chop the onion, roughly into 1cm pieces. Chop the broccoli stems (reserve the florets for later) and celery sticks to a similar size. Add the oil to the pan and gently fry for 10 minutes until soft, but not brown. Stir regularly so it doesn’t brown too much or stick to the bottom of the pan.

Divide the remaining broccoli into florets and peel and roughly chop the potato into 2cm pieces.

Once the vegetables in the pan have started to soften add the stock, broccoli florets and potato.  Bring to the boil, and simmer for 15 minutes until all vegetables are soft and cooked.

Carefully blend the soup with a stick blender, then return to the heat. Break up the cheese into small pieces and add it to the soup. Heat gently to allow the cheese to melt. Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Blue cheese can be quite salty so add a small pinch of salt first and taste before adding more if necessary.

Serve with bread for dunking.

While doing my research on how to reduce the husbands cholesterol I came across the 5:2 diet. A fasting diet that helps reduce cholesterol and is also great for weight loss.  The 5:2 diet involves fasting for 2 non-consecutive days a week.  Although it is described as fasting, which to me implies no food, what it actually means is restricting your daily Calorie intake to 500 Calories for women and 600 Calories for men.  This sounds very little, but if you are clever about what you eat, you can eat 3 small meals a day. Just remember drinks count as Calories so no cappuccinos or wine!

Six months on I have reached my target weight. I’ve lost 12KG and 2-3 dress sizes (depending which shops I go to). I am no longer fasting on a weekly basis, but I now know I have a great way to keep my waistline in check.  If I’ve had a big eating weekend I will do a fast day during the week for maintenance.

I couldn’t resist including that all important before and after shot, after all, it’s not a real dieting article without.

How does a fast day look for me? I start the day with one slice of toast with low fat spread and Vegemite.  This equates to about 100 Calories.  My usual breakfast is a slice of toast and if I’m busy at work I can easily keep going to lunch on 100 Calories.

For lunch I aim to eat 70-100 Calories.  This could be a bowl of homemade soup or low fat lunch slices with tomatoes or pea puree.  I find it easy to keep the Calories down if I make things like soup myself.  I have found some great recipes online, that I have collected on my Pinterest page.  There are a few food bloggers doing this diet as it lends itself to people who like to eat.  I could never be disciplined enough to Calorie count for 7 days a week, but I’m stubborn enough to stick at it for 2 days a week, knowing I can have those duck fat roast potatoes on the weekend.

I save the greatest number of Calories for the evening. Some people prefer to eat the largest meal for breakfast, to set them up for the day, but I’m not really a breakfast person, so 100 Calories is just fine.  Now you might be feeling a bit hungry by now, so I make sure I get the largest volume of food for my 300 Calories.  Dinner often involves a grilled piece of chicken or fish with lots of vegetables, but no potatoes. I have also found that bourghal is relatively low in calories so you can eat quite a lot for 300 Calories.

There has been mixed press about this diet.  Many people suggest the diet encourages you to binge and eat badly for five days a week.  I actually found the opposite.  The limited Calorie intake made me realise that I don’t need to eat such large portions the rest of the week.  I can now identify when I’m full and can stop eating and I actually think my stomach may have shrunk a little!

Even though I’m not fasting strictly anymore I do still enjoy some of the lower Calorie dinners.  This stir fry was one of my firm favourites.

Pork and Vegetable Stir Fry (serves 2, 292 Calories per serve)

200g pork fillet, fat and sinew removed
30ml soy sauce
10ml Mirin
10ml Sesame oil
12g grated ginger
10g chopped, fresh garlic
200g carrot
150g snow  peas
1 can baby corn spears
10g fresh coriander, leaves picked and chopped
2g sesame seeds

Slice the pork into long, thin strips. Mix the soy sauce and Mirin together in a bowl and add half the sesame oil to make a marinade. Put the pork strips in the bowl, stirring to coat with the mixture and leave to marinate for 10 minutes while you chop the rest of the veg.

Prepare the veg ready for stir frying: cut the carrot into matchsticks; the snow peas into strips; halve the corn spears.

Heat a wok or large frying pan to high and add the rest of the sesame oil.  Remove the pork from the marinade, reserving the liquid for later.  Quickly fry the pork until it is brown on all sides and just cooked. This should only take a few minutes.  Remove the pork from the pan and set aside.

Add the ginger and garlic to the pan and fry for 1 minute, then add the carrot, snow peas and corn. Stir fry quickly on a high heat for about 2 minutes until heated through but not over cooked. Stir fried veg should be hot but crunchy.

Return the pork to the pan and add the marinade. Stir fry for another minute until the pork is hot and the marinade is bubbling.Serve sprinkled with coriander leaves and sesame seeds.

If you are not watching the calories so closely this is great served with noodles. Cook the noodles and stir through when you add the marinade to coat them with flavour.

Not deterred by the lack of oven I was still keen to participate in this months Sweet Adventures Blog Hop.  Hosted by JJ from 84th&3rd, the theme for this hop is Cocktail Party.  I love the idea of cocktail party food AKA cute, bite sized morsels. This inspired me to create cute, bite sized dessert, with a dash of alcohol thrown in to further enhance the cocktail theme.

Limoncello is one of my favourite tipples, added to lemon curd it makes for a great lemon meringue tart. Now I would normally make my own pastry but without a reliable oven I had to opt for a bought pastry.  I always find bought pastry a little too thick, but with the amount of curd and meringue in the tarts it was actually a good ratio.

This is a great assembly line dessert.  I made the lemon curd so I could use the Limoncello, but you could use ready made curd, then the only part you need to make is the Italian meringue.

Start by making the Italian meringue, then pipe some lemon curd into the tart cases and pipe the meringue on top.  I finished the meringue with a mini blow torch.  The browning of the meringue isn’t critical as the sugar syrup cooks the egg white when you make the meringue, so it’s perfectly safe to eat as is, but it does make it look nicer and give a slightly caramelised flavour.

Using Limoncello in the curd gives it a grown up kick and certainly makes this a great desert to serve up at a cocktail party. The following recipe makes enough to fill 24 tarts with some left over.

Limoncello Curd

50ml Limoncello
30ml lemon juice
125g caster sugar
80g unsalted butter
2-3 beaten eggs (around 125g)

Put the Limoncello, lemon juice, caster sugar and butter in a heat proof bowl and put over a pan of simmering water (do not allow the water to touch the bottom of the bowl). Stir until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved.

Gradually add the beaten egg to the mixture and continue to stir over the heat until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Do not allow the water to get too hot otherwise the egg will scramble.   The curd should take about ten to twenty minutes to thicken.

Set aside to cool before filling your tart shells. I halved this recipe for Italian meringue and I still had plenty left over to make into meringue kisses.

Tropical and exotic are kind of interchangeable in my world.  If we’re talking fruits, we’re talking all of those fruit that were not readily available growing up in the UK. The first dish I ever cooked in my high school home economics class was pineapple upside down cake.  Despite the pineapples coming from a tin I still classed it as an exotic, tropical fruit cake.  I toyed with the idea of recreating this dish, but I do not look back fondly on my high school cooking days.

With pineapple upside down cake disregarded, it started me thinking about mango and passion fruit.  Two fruits I hadn’t eaten fresh before moving Down Under.  The other consideration was the health benefits.  I love cheesecake, but it’s not the healthiest dessert in the world.  So with a bit of tweaking, I was able to reduce the calorie content, and make a cheesecake that contains about 40% less calories than a typical serve of cheesecake.  With your average slice of cheesecake containing 383 Calories per slice, mine weighs in at a slightly healthier 226 Calories per slice. Although I cannot claim it to be healthy, I can claim it is healthier than a typical slice of cheesecake. Despite it’s sightly healthier claims, it also tastes pretty good too.

Mango and Passion Fruit Cheesecake (serves 12)
60g Nice biscuits
60g rolled oats
60g almond meal
60g butter, melted

250g tinned mango
250g light cream cheese
250g light Ricotta cheese
180g Low fat Greek yoghurt
1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste
75g caster sugar
3 large eggs, beaten
4 passion fruit

Pre-heat oven to 160 Degrees Celsius.  Grease a 22cm loose bottom, round, springform tin.

Start by making the base. Break up the biscuits and put them in a food processor.  Pulse until they look like bread crumbs.  Remove from the food processor and do the same with the rolled oats to break them up a bit. Return the biscuit crumbs to the processor with the oats and add the almond meal. Add the melted butter to the crumb mixture and pulse briefly until they are all combined, and there are no dry bits left in the mixture.

Press the crumb mixture into the bottom of the pan. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes then allow to cool.

Put the mango pieces into a food processor and blitz until it forms a smooth puree.  Put the cream cheese and ricotta into the bowl of a stand mixer and mix briefly to combine. Add the yoghurt, vanilla bean paste, caster sugar and continue to mix until smooth. Be careful not to over mix as it can become quite loose.  Ensure the eggs are well beaten, then add to the cheese mixture and mix until combined.  This should thicken the mixture slightly.

Pour the cheese mixture onto the cooled biscuit base and bake in the oven for 1 hour.  After 1 hour it should be set, with a slight wobble in the middle.  Turn off the oven and allow it to cool in the oven with the door open slightly, for 1 hour.  This was the general consensus from an number of recipes I read, apparently it stops the cheesecake from cracking.  Mine still cracked a tiny bit, I can only imagine what would happen without this stage, and I wasn’t prepared to risk it.

To serve, scrape the flesh and seeds from the four passion fruit. Pass 3 of the fruits through the sieve, reserving the juice and discarding the seeds. Keep the seeds from 1 fruit, mixing with the juice of the rest of the fruits.

Drizzle the juice and seed mixture of the top of the cheesecake and chill until ready to serve.

My love of burgers stems from that après club snack of my younger days.  My favourite was always the blue cheese burger and that is where the inspiration for this dish comes from.  That burger was a normal beef burger with blue cheese mayo.  As my tastes have developed I now know that blue cheese, pork and apple are a match made in heaven. So that is what I did.

This is a recipe for real burger. A burger that contains real meat and just enough other ingredients to bind it together and add flavour.  It is perfect served with the blue cheese sauce I made here.

Pork and Apple Burger (makes 8-10)

60g white bread, torn into pieces
30-50ml milk
1kg minced pork
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and grated
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tablespoons of chopped, fresh sage
1 egg
salt and pepper to taste

lettuce , blue cheese sauce and burger buns to serve

In a large bowl, soak the bread in the milk.  The bread should soak up the milk without any left in the bottom of the bowl.  The amount of milk required will depend on how old the bread is.  Use just enough milk to soak the bread.

Mix the bread with the pork mince, grated apple, garlic and chopped sage.  Mix thoroughly with your hands so the ingredients are well distributed.

Lightly beat the egg then add to the meat mixture with salt and pepper to taste.  Mix thoroughly then chill in the fridge for half an hour.

Once chilled, shape the burgers.  Divide the mixture into 8-10 portions depending on how large you want the burgers.  Wet your hands with cold water to stop the meat sticking to your hands. Shape the burgers by rolling the meat into balls and firmly flattening them.

Chill the burgers before cooking so they don’t fall apart on the barbeque.  This usually takes a minimum of half an hour.

Pre-heat the barbeque to medium hot and cook the burgers for about 5 minutes each side or until firm and cooked through.

Serve in a lightly tosated bun with shredded iceberg lettuce and blue cheese sauce.

I also feel I’ve gained enough skills to start experimenting and developing my own cheeses. I can’t exactly claim this one as mine, as it is that classic cheese of Wallace and Grommet fame. But I did read a few recipes and tailor it to suit.  For Christmas I’ve added some cranberries to make it into a great cheese for dessert.  This cheese is tart and crumbly, but with a little bit of sour/sweet from the cranberries.  It also looks pretty on the cheeseboard for Christmas.

As with my other homemade cheeses I cannot really call this a Wensleydale as it was not made in Yorkshire and I’m not sure it would pass the test with Wallace and Grommet but I hope the resulting cheese is somewhere close.  I enjoyed it and it is another cheese to add to my collections of favourites… It’s getting harder and harder to narrow it down to just one.

The Wensleydale should be matured for 1-2 months prior to eating.  The Wensleydale with cranberries is best eaten sooner rather than later as the cranberries can start to ferment if left too long.  One month in and the cheese with cranberries was perfect.

This recipe is adapted from recipes from Paul Peacock and Ricki Carol.

Wensleydale with Cranberries
8 litres unhomogenised milk
1/2 teaspoon MM100 starter culture prepared in 200ml UHT milk
2ml Calcium Chloride diluted in 60ml cooled, boiled water
2ml Rennet diluted in 60ml cooled, boiled water
2 tsp salt
50-100g dried cranberries

Prepare your starter culture the day before or use as per the instructions on the packet.

Gather all your equipment together and make sure they are all clean and sterilised.

Gently heat the milk in a large non-reactive pan until it reaches 32 degrees Celsius. Add the prepared starter culture stirring until well combined. Maintain the temperature at 32C and allow the milk to ripen for 60-90 minutes.

Add the calcium chloride if you are are using and stir until well combined.  Add the rennet, and stir with an up and down motion until well combined, this should take about 1 minute.

Maintain the temperature at 32C and allow the curds to set for 1 hour. After 1 hour test the curds for a clean break.  If you have a clean break cut the curds into 2cm cubes and allow to rest for 15 minutes.  If there is not a clean break, allow to stand for another 15 minutes and test again.

Gently stir the curds for 15 minutes while raising the temperature to 35C

Allow the curds to rest for 15 minutes, maintaining the temperature at 35C

Remove enough whey to expose the curds then drain the curds in a colander lined with damp butter muslin. Allow to drain for 15-20 minutes, or until the whey stops dripping.  Cut the curds again into 2cm cubes, then sprinkle with the salt.  At this point you can either transfer to the mould and press or add some dried fruit, such as cranberries.  I thought I’d do half and half so I put half of the curds in a mould lined with damp butter muslin.

I mixed the other half of the curds with 50g dried cranberries.  I then transferred the curds to the mould lined with butter muslin.  Press the curds over night with 5kg of weight, turning after an hour or so.

Sprinkle with 1tsp salt and air dry for 12-24 hours turning once before waxing.  The cheese needs to be dry before you can apply the wax. Heat the wax and dip the cheese into it, ensuring all edges are covered with at least two layers.

Age in a cheese fridge set at 12-15C for 4-6 weeks.

This does lead to other problems though.  The Christmas tree was always positioned near to the fireplace so he didn’t have far to go. When you have to enter via the back door, you not only get presents delivered under your tree, but also snowy footprints from the back door to the tree.

And then there is the problem of where do you leave the ginger ale, carrot and mince pie?  If my memory serves me well, I think the protocol is to leave your snack for Father Christmas just near the entree point so that he can refuel himself and the reindeer’s before leaving the gifts.  This gives him enough energy to continue on his momentous journey around the globe.

The snacks for Father Christmas were always purchased as a child; we weren’t a baking family.  And strangely enough they would only ever be half eaten.  I guess Father Christmas has a lot of places to stop and if he ate all of the offerings along the way he would never be finished in time.  As we got older we did start to show some interest in cooking, and as my regular readers are fully aware my Mum was not a cook or a baker.  Any thing we made had to be simple, assembly type dishes (like the infamous sweetie cakes).  One Christmas I picked up a recipe card from a well known UK supermarket; the recipe was so simple I was able to make it myself.

I guess this recipe is a cheats mince pie.  It is my offering for this months Sweet Adventures Blog Hop.  Christina from The Hungry Australian is our host, and she has challenged to share the treats we would leave out for Santa.  I can hardly tell the world to buy mince pies, it kind of defeats the purpose of the blog hop, so I’m sharing the recipe for Christmas Parcels that were a favourite Christmas dish for my teenage years.  This is also what I would leave out for Father Christmas this year if we were spending Christmas at home. And yes, I would have to place it by the back door, as yet again I live in a house with no chimney.

Christmas Parcels (makes 10)
35g butter
5 sheets of Filo Pastry
410g jar of Fruit Mince
icing sugar to dust

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Start by melting the butter in a small bowl. Lay 5 sheets of Filo pastry on top of each on a clean work surface and cut into 6 equal squares.  Lay the pieces you are not using under a damp cloth so they don’t dry out.

Place a square on the work surface, brush with the melted butter, then lay another square on top, at an angle. Brush with melted butter then place a third square of pastry on top, again at an angle, so you have a twelve point star.  Brush the top layer with butter too.

Place a generous, heaped teaspoon of the fruit mince in the centre of the pastry.  I would say a tablespoon, but it’s difficult to get a tablespoon into the small jars.  Taking four sides of the pastry bring them together and scrunch the pastry to make a parcel that looks a bit like Father Christmas’s sack.  Pinch the pastry firmly so it stays together while it cooks.

Place the parcels on a greased baking tray (I used some of the left over melted butter) and brush the outside of the parcels with the remaining butter.  Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until crisp and golden.

Sprinkle the parcels with icing sugar while they are still warm.  The parcels are best served warm, but also taste OK cold.