Festive makes and bakes

Although all four of our birthday's are within the next month, Christmas is still at the forefront of my mind.

Last week I made the Christmas cake with Alex's 'help' using the recipe I used for my parent's anniversary cake I made back in the summer. It was such a delicious recipe that I had to use it again as my past attempts at fruit cake haven't really been what I was after. This year I added some crystallised ginger and more lemon and orange zest so it should be packed full of flavour-the mix tasted good and it smelt divine last night in my house so here's hoping! I made two as I am going to cut the square one up into 4 to give as presents, if you click on the Anniversary cake link there is a link to how to marzipan the cake which I found very helpful. I might do a gingerbread man theme again this year when it comes to the decorating.

Although I quite like the look of this idea too-just not sure if I'd have the patience to colour the marzipan!

source

Have you got people that are hard to buy for? Want to put a little something together if you are mainly giving them money? A couple of years ago I made these sweet jars up for all our siblings, the jars were from Ikea and I think they are about a £1 each. The sweets were all from big multi-packs and split up-they worked out much cheaper than buying anything similar in the shops. I did post about how I made these tags too which can make presents like this even more personalised.

Now you probably won't have time to do this one in time for this year-unless you're super speedy at hand-sewing or with the sewing machine! But this is my advent calendar I made for Alex when he was 2 and it will hopefully be coming out every year like the last two. 

If you are making edible gifts I can highly recommend these marzipan and pistachio yule logs they went down very well with everybody who tried-including me (not one for the dieters mind you)!

Via Tesco real food

I am also planning on making some gingerbread again this year, making ahead and freezing it means it is quite good for unexpected visitors or to make ahead for gifts so it's not all last minute, plus I need to try out my new snow flake cutters!