Chocolate, Coffee & Macadamia Ice Cream Cake {Weekend Cookbook}

As Christmas in Australia can be really hot, the traditional desserts often don’t suit our climate. Most of us turn to the good old Aussie Pav which is nice (and we almost always have one) but it gets a bit boring. 

Last Christmas I decided to mix things up a bit and make an Ice Cream Cake. It was a recipe that a girl I used to work with would make for us. Whenever there was a lunch or celebration we would look to Emma to make her famous ice cream cake. She put different things in to this recipe but it was similar. 

My favourite layer is the coffee layer (even though I don’t actually drink coffee very often).

If you are looking for Christmas Dessert Inspiration. I highly recommend this cake.

Chocolate, Coffee and Macadamia Ice Cream Cake

Our Christmas Desserts from 2011

2 litres of vanilla ice cream

1 litre of good quality chocolate ice cream

½ cup of macadamia nuts

½ cup of good quality white chocolate (buttons or broken up into small pieces)

¼ - ½  cup of made up coffee (instant/plunger/machine)

1. Line a spring form tin with baking paper (base and sides).

2. Divide vanilla ice cream into two portions. Return one to the freezer and allow the second portion to soften.

3. Once softened, mix through the nuts and the chocolate and spoon ice cream into prepared tin, cover and freeze for 2 hours.

4. Soften the remaining vanilla ice cream, then add the coffee (made up coffee not the granules or grounds). Mix through more coffee for a stronger coffee flavour (it is ok if you have to taste it lots of times to ensure the coffee flavour is just right...just make sure there is enough left for the cake). Spoon coffee layer over the nut and chocolate layer and freeze for 2 hours.

5. Soften the chocolate ice cream and spoon into the tin, cover and freeze.

6. Remove ice cream cake from the tin just before serving.

What are you cooking for dessert this Christmas?

 Weekend Cookbook Guidelines
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Christmas Gingerbread Men {Weekend Cookbook}

As a child, my favourite thing to bake was Gingerbread. I would bake it at every chance I had. My parents would always give me lots of praise for my baking skills. However it wasn’t until I was older that they told me they got tired of constantly eating Gingerbread biscuits. Well, Mum and Dad....the Gingerbread is back !

The kids and I had lots of fun making these. They loved cutting them out and decorating them, I loved the smell of gingerbread baking in the house and we all love eating them.

I actually made a double batch and froze the cookie dough so that I can easily bake more when I need them.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I do.

Christmas Gingerbread Men

125g of unsalted butter, softened

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup golden syrup

2 ½ cups of plain flour

2 teaspoons of ground ginger

1 teaspoon of bicarb soda

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Place the butter and the sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until pale and creamy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the syrup, flour, ginger and bicarb soda. Beat until a smooth dough forms.

Roll out the dough between two sheets of baking paper (around 5mm thick) and place in the fridge for 20 minutes.

When firm, using a small gingerbread man cutter, cut shapes from the dough and place on baking trays lined with baking paper. Bake for 5 minutes or until lightly golden. Allow to cool completely on the trays.

What have you been cooking this week?

Weekend Cookbook Guidelines
1. Link up a recipe that you have posted recently.
2. Link up by clicking on the link below and pasting your post URL (not your blog's URL)
3. Share some love by checking out the other links and leave a comment. 

4.If you make other blogger's recipe take a photo and post it in their facebook page (or yours and tag them). 

5. Add the Weekend Cookbook button to your post/blog (it is on my sidebar).

Where is my Festive Spirit?

Christmas is just around the corner. The shops are filled with Christmas decorations, our mailboxes are stuffed with catalogues of Christmas gift ideas and every second blog you read is loaded with Christmas ideas.

I would love to share with you the exciting things I am preparing for Christmas but sadly, I have no Christmas spirit in me. Most years I get excited about putting up lights, decorating a tree and buying gifts for people. Not this year though. I just can't really get in the mood for it.

I am not normally a negative Nancy about Christmas, in fact last year I blogged about the Christmas traditions we were starting as a family. I was super excited last year so where is my festive spirit this year?

We went to a Christmas tree farm last year

and told our kids the Little People Christmas story

Made a Gingerbread house

and got decorating

I tried to get some Christmas spirit by making a Gingerbread house. That helped a little bit. I even spent a morning on Pintrest trying to get inspired with Christmas craft (Check out  Undeservedbless on Pintrest if you want to see what I found), but I still have not been all that inspired. It all seems like so much effort for one day.

I know that by the time December rolls around I will get in the mood for it but even if I don't it is ok. For me Christmas is about more than one big, crazy, present filled day. The real meaning of Christmas (that Jesus was born) is exciting for me everyday. It is something that I am thankful for everyday as it has given me that life I have now.

We teach our kids the meaning of Christmas as I wrote about last year for Life on a Hill but we still add in the fun of Santa and presents. I don't have a problem with Santa (although my kids are scared of him) as long as he isn't all that Christmas is about for kids.

I do miss how easy it was to be excited about Christmas as a child. Hopefully once the excitement of Christmas starts to sink in for my kids, I will get excited too.

Are you excited about Christmas? What do you do to get into the Festive Spirit?

Linking up with Jess for:

Weekend Cookbook: Kiddy Star Biscuits {Cooking with kids}

I am not really good at doing crafts with my kids so I cook with them a lot. I figure that the mess is worth it because you get a tasty treat at the end. I also appreciate not having a million pieces of paper with cotton balls stuck to them around the house. 

My kids always ask to make these biscuits. They love helping with the ingredients and then getting to roll out the dough and use the cutters.

Try this one out with the kiddies (if you dare). They also make good Christmas gifts.

Kiddy Star Biscuits



125g butter, softened
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons of vanilla
1 1/2 cups of plain flour
1 tablespoon of cocoa sifted

1. Mixed the butter and sugar in an electric mixer and beat until pale and creamy. Add egg and vanilla and beat for a few more minutes.
2. Add the flour and beat until a dough forms. Remove 1/2 of the mixture.
3. Add the cocoa to the remaining dough and beat until combined.
4. Roll each dough portion between two sheets of baking paper until 3mm thick and place in fridge for 30 minutes.

5. Preheat oven to 160 degrees. Find two star cutters, one slightly smaller than the other. Cut the same number of stars in each dough. Place the chocolate stars on top of the vanilla stars.

6. Place on a baking tray and bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly golden. Allow to cool on a wire rack.

What have you been cooking this week?


 Weekend Cookbook Guidelines
1. Link up a recipe that you have posted recently.
2. Link up by clicking on the link below and pasting your post URL (not your blog's URL)
3. Share some love by checking out the other links and leave a comment. 
4.If you make other blogger's recipe take a photo and post it in their facebook page (or yours and tag them). 
5. Add the Weekend Cookbook button to your post/blog (it is on my sidebar).

Christmas at Our Place: Planning the Christmas Meal

I am very excited to be hosting a family Christmas event on Christmas Eve this year. It will only be a small group of us but I am excited nonetheless. 

One of my Christmas jobs in the last week has been to put together a meal plan for the day. Of course there will be way too much food but really, what is Christmas if there isn't leftovers for weeks afterward.

I used my The Organised Housewife Christmas Planner (click on the link to see my review of the Christmas Planner) to plan the meal and to create a shopping list and here is what I have so far:

Starters/Snacks: 

• Cheese Platter and crackers (hopefully supplied by my bro with some cheeses suitable for his preggers sister) .
• Chips and Dips (planning to make the Christmas Dip -from Toddler Tastes as it is yummy)

Entree:

• BBQ Prawns 

• Cold Cooked Prawns (supplied by my Dad) 

Mains: 

• Cold Leg Ham (we were given a whole ham this year)
• Cold Turkey Breast -which I will cook the night before

Salads:

• Creamy Potato Salad
• Christmas Salad (which has cos lettuce, boccacini, croutons, red currants and pecans)

Bread: 

• Crusty Italian bread from our local farmers market (if we can get it -or bake at home rolls)

Condiments:

• Cranberry Sauce
• A variety of sauces/mustard my Mum brought back from Tasmania recently.

Desserts: 

• Three layered ice cream cake (Choc layer, vanilla with white choc bits and macadamia nuts and vanilla with real coffee mixed through)
• Christmas cake with custard 

Drinks: 

• Beer/Wine/Soft Drinks

We also have a whole gingerbread house to eat and a big box of chocolates that we were given.

As you can see there is a fair bit of food but it is actually going to be really simple to prepare and when I put together a shopping list there was not really all that much I had to buy. If you can it always helps to have people bring along food etc to contribute and it cuts the costs down a little.

Anyway I thought I would share this with you all. I hope your Christmas meal planning is going well (if you have to do it at all).

I would love to know what others are planning to cook up for Christmas. Are there any must have foods for your Christmas table? 

Beginning New Christmas Traditions

This Christmas is the first Christmas we are able to celebrate with a child who is old enough to understand the basic concepts of Christmas. Last year all she managed to understand was "Santa" and "Presents" despite our attempts to tell her about the real meaning of Christmas.

I recently posted on Life on a Hill about teaching kids what Christmas really means where I had some ideas about what I would like our Christmas traditions to look like. This year we have decided to make a more deliberate effort to form our own family Christmas traditions.

As our extended family don't live locally, this will be the first year since the kids were born that we are going to have Christmas in our own home as Tim will be working over Christmas  (preaching at the Christmas services). This means that we can try out new ways to share Christmas with our family and create our own traditions.

To mark the beginning of our Christmas celebrations, we decided that the first Saturday of December would be filled with decorating the house and beginning our talks with the kids about the meaning of Christmas.

For something special we started the day with yummy croissants and read the Christmas story from the kid's Bible. We then got ready and took a trip to the local farmer's market to purchase important food supplies for the day (fresh bread and a massive bag of cherries). We couldn't resist and began eating the bread and cherries in the car on the way to our next stop.

The next stop was the Christmas tree farm. As both Tim and I grew up in families which had real Christmas trees we decided to include this tradition in our family. I found a farm just outside Canberra Christmas Tree Keng where you can choose and cut your own tree. The kids were excited to see so many Christmas trees and they helped us pick the perfect tree. With a saw they provided we (Tim) chopped down this tree and popped in the the trailer to take home. The lovely people at the farm gave us lollypops for the kids and lollies for us (that worked nicely in keeping the kiddies quiet on the way home).

Our tree!

Our tree with us girls and my bump

Emily helps with the sawing

Lolly pop and a free fly which Claire couldn't shake

When we arrived home we put some Christmas music on and reenacted the Christmas story with the help of the Fisher Price Nativity play set. This is such a great toy as the kids can play with it without breaking it, while learning the story of Jesus' birth. 

Reenacting the Christmas story

After some lunch and putting our littlest person into bed we started to decorate our gingerbread house. It was an interesting experience trying to balance the creative talents of two adults with the creative talents of an almost three year old....but we were happy with the result. Even little Claire "helped" when she woke up (mainly by stuffing her face with lollies and pulling lollies back off the house).

The constructions begins

Claire eats some lollies

I get creative

Claire eats some lollies

I eat some lollies

Finished house

When the time came to decorate the tree the girls were very excited. I think they just thought we would have a naked tree and were happy with that idea. We went for a silver and red theme and the kids get excited every night when the lights go on.

For the rest of the day the girls enjoyed watching the Colin Buchanan DVD, King of Christmas. They watched it over and over and over again. We just relaxed and enjoyed our new Christmas traditions coming to life. We can't wait to continue to see our kids learn more over the coming weeks and to show them how important the birth of this little baby born over 2000 years ago is to us.

What are your Christmas traditions? Are you planning to create new ones this year?

Linking up with Jess from Diary of a SAHM for IBOT for the first time!

The Organised Housewife’s Christmas Planner –A Review

As some of you will already know I purchased The Organised Housewife’s Christmas Planner a few weeks ago and was asked by a reader to do a review of the planner. This review was not requested by The Organised Housewife’s blog and I am not getting anything out of this review I just like to share good products/ideas when I find them.

I purchased the planner for a few reasons, one was that it was on sale (always appealing), the next was that we are having Christmas at my place this year and I also just wanted to be much more organised with presents and budgets than I have in previous years.

The Christmas Planner is a downloadable file which you print off yourself and which you can reprint each year to make Christmas planning easier. I was very excited and went out and bought a lovely green folder to place it in.

 The sections contained in the planner include: Planning (Calenders, checklist, to do list), Budget, Gifts (Family gift list, friends gift list, stocking stuffers etc), Christmas Cards, Meal Plan, Traditions, and Travel.

As mentioned before the Budget section was important to me so it was the first section I filled out. It has four columns with Name, Budget, Actual and Difference. I found this helpful as too often at Christmas I spend more on gifts than I plan to. Now I can have a record of where this is happening and by how much I am overspending. It also has sections for budgeting Cards, Decorations, Food and Events however  I am yet to fill these sections out.

The next most important section to me was the Gifts section. I found this section a little confusing as it has three sections each with “Name” written above and  for each name it has gift ideas with budget, actual and a tick box for purchased. I am not sure whether it is supposed to be Family name ( i.e Smith Family) or for each family member (eg Emily). I have still found it very useful but I am not sure I am using it correctly and it also seems to be a double up with the budget pages. 

It has a great page for keeping track of online purchases made and a place to list ideas for stocking stuffers, advent calendar gifts and a shopping list with what items you are going to buy from which shop. As we are often asked for gift ideas for the kids and for us from relatives, I would have liked to see a “wish list” page for the family members.

My favourite section is the Meal Plan which begins with a place to record your favourite Christmas recipes and where they are located. Mine are in many cookbooks and Magazines so this will help me greatly in planning the meal. Then it has each course and other important additions (snacks, drinks, bread etc), what they are and who is bringing them. The section also includes a baking and cooking plan and a grocery list.

I don’t generally send cards but I have decided to send a few so have made use of the Cards Section which will help me know who I have sent them to and received them from.

Finally there is a Travel  section which is pretty basic and not all that useful for those who have to pack for children but is great to remind us mums to actually pack stuff for ourselves.

Would I recommend it? Yes! I have already been using it well with the gifts/budget sections and the meal planner part will be great. It is also something that you can use year after year so you get your money’s worth. I generally have a scrap of paper lying around the house with ideas for gifts and documents on the computer for meal plans for Christmas so this keeps it all in the one place and won’t get lost. It is only $14.95 and it emailed to you as soon as payment goes through. I paid with PayPal so it was pretty quick.

If this sounds like something you would like it can be found at http://theorganisedhousewife.com.au/christmas-planner/

If you have any other questions or if you have one and want to tell us what you think please feel free to comment.

Enjoy your Christmas Planning!