Christmas in New Zealand

A lot has happened since I last posted. I graduated, for starters! After graduating, I headed to New Zealand for a holiday (my older sister bought a house there), before returning to Australia for work. A year later and I am back in New Zealand, once again for a Christmas holiday.

My younger sister and I made a gingerbread house, as is tradition...


Only this time, it featured banana-wielding ninjas, among other details....

You could, in fact, call it a ninja bread house! Badoom boom ching!

• Recipe for vegan gingerbread
• Recipe for vegan royal icing
• Gingerbread house mould
• Ninja bread men cookie cutters

It's been lovely to kick back after a very full-on year. I have been crafting, just not blogging. I hope to share some of my creative work from 2011 in the coming months.

In the meantime, I got up to a little crafting here!

My older sister and I bought a sewing machine for her house last year, and I calculate it has made about 80 Morsbags. To liven things up, I decided to make a little pincushion-in-a-basket. I picked up the cute basket from Trade Aid and the fabric is left over from making Morsbags.


I winged the pattern and ended up having to make the insert smaller. Let's just say that it's a good thing that the basket is curved and you can't see the edges where I brought it in!

Also, it was fun stuffing the cushion with scraps of fabric (I had no filling), but it does mean that there's a bit of resistance when it comes to pushing in the pins. I'm sure it makes for an efficient pin bluntener if nothing else!


I'll leave you with a picture of some of the decorations up in my room here in New Zealand. On the left, the 2012 Frankie Calendar (a Chrissie present) and on the right, a tea towel I picked up from a local op-shop. I'm loving greys and greens at the moment.

Happy new year, everyone!

Jumping on the breadwagon

I think I may be late to the "Artisan bread in 5 minutes a day" party.... The master recipe is available free online, so go forth and experiment if you haven't already!

Vegan snickerdoodles

These are just delicious. Crunchy on the outside and a touch chewy on the inside. The perfect pick-me-up! I got the recipe from Vegan Yum Yum's book, the same one I got the apple strudel recipe from. Having a vegan housemate is certainly a good excuse to do some fun baking...

The recipe is over on the Vegan Yum Yum blog and for you aussies, I used nuttelex for the margarine and Ogran's "No egg".

Everything tastes better wrapped in puff pastry!

I recently picked up Vegan Yum Yum's book after spotting it at a local book-store. That very night, I tried a creamy pasta recipe. The next night, I tried the apple strudel.

It was amazing. The recipe was simple, and the result was divine. I hadn't cooked with puff pastry in ages... The experience reminded me of the first time I tried deep fried goat's cheese. I was in heaven. Other types of cheeses were tried. For a while I was coating everything in eggs and breadcrumbs and frying it.

My boyfriend even rolled up chicken curry and rice leftovers into little balls to batter and fry. Oh yes.

The other night, I made a simple rice and veg sauce dinner. I was also craving puff pastry. So I spread out a layer of rice on a sheet of puff pastry, then a layer of sauce, rolled it up and baked it.


It was amazing, if a little funny looking. It's true... everything tastes better wrapped in puff pastry!

Dhal with a twist

I like dhal. It's a tasty, colourful, cheap, nutritious, easy, dish to make. I prefer to make it as a side for curries, veg, etc., but sometimes I'm too tired or lazy to cook more than one dish.

Dhal with rice can be a touch on the bland side, so I was delighted to see that Vegan Dad had posted a recipe for dhal with a twist: Tarka Dhal.

Now my photo looks pretty different to his, and I did adjust the recipe slightly.

I didn't have sweet onions, so I just used a red onion and added a teaspoon of brown sugar to take the edge off its taste. I also added a teaspoon of chilli flakes to the tomato mixture. It was super punchy, so I didn't miss the garam masala which I usually add to dhal :)

Vegan truffles

I made these truffles following Dreena's recipe. The only reasonably-priced vegan dark chocolate I could find at Coles (after all, I needed to get 3 x 100g blocks) was 70% cocoa. I'm not much of a dark chocolate girl - I prefer around the 50-60% mark personally.

Still, they're part of a Christmas gift for my housemate, who is vegan, so that's what I went for. Also, I stuck with almond essence rather than almond extract (again, based on availability). For the liqueur, I used Cointreau. Mmm.


Her main present is a darling purple & white round casserole dish with a matching lid which I picked up from my local Op-Shop. My family and friends follow the tradition whereby you put a coin in a wallet when it is a gift, so I decided to extend that, and place some food in the baking dish. (The fact that living with her gives me immediate access to copious quantities of truffles post-Christmas may also have contributed to this decision...)

I just traced the bottom of the casserole onto freezer paper (of which I have a roll of for stencilling) and then layered the truffles up with freezer paper between each layer.


From left to right: Coconut, cocoa, crushed walnuts, icing sugar and hundreds&thousands.