Santa Claus is coming to town

I'm a bit of a fan of Father Christmas decorations. I like the fact that there are so many interpretations of Santa, St Nicholas and papa noël and I love the ways that he can be portrayed.

As mentioned before I really like to stick to traditional decorations and not so much of the cartoon Santa fan really.  I am so in love with our new hanging Santa from cath kidston which we bought this year and my favorite decorations are the Father Christmas on top of our tree (no angels or stars here) and the standing Father Christmas that I bought G last year as one of his Xmas prezzies.

This year on our annual shopping trip for new decs we fell in love with the snowy, rustic Santa with the shovel.  We had to take him home so I decided to give him to G as an early Xmas prezzie this year.

They now sit either side of the tele and are treasured Christmas additions to the family.

Mince Pie Magic

There isn't much better at this time of year than homemade mince pies.  Everyone has their different approach to the mince pie: sweet pastry, puff pastry, Filo pastry parcels, lid vs no lid.

I'm a fan of everything but I do think that as you can quite easily eat several of the tasty morsels at one time sometimes a smaller idea of a lid is good.

I stick to ready made mince meat as a base and then add to it as I go.  My mince meat was a Lidl choice and I added orange zest, orange juice, finely chopped cooking apple and glace cherries.

Ingredients:

250g self raising flour

110g butter

1 egg

Pinch of salt

Method:

• Heat oven to 160C.
• Sieve flour and salt into a metal bowl.
• Rub in the butter.
• Mix the egg in a cup, then add to the flour and butter mix.
• Bring together with a metal spatula, adding enough cold water to bring together.
• Kneed briefly to bring together, then place in the fridge for 20 mins.
• Remove from the fridge, roll out, and using a round cutter, cut out the base, and place in a muffin tin.
• Fill each base with a teaspoon mincemeat.
• Cut small stars with the remaining pastry and place on the mincemeat.
• Glaze with an egg.
• Cook in the oven for 20mins.