Chocolate Popcorn Tear & Share Cake - Bakemas Day 4

Chestnut, Cranberry & Cashew Broccoli - Bakemas 8

Garlic & Rosemary Baked Camembert with Cranberry Relish - Bakemas Day 18

Cranberry & Coconut Crumble Mince Pies - Bakemas Day 15

Christmas is all about the mince pies! Okay, It’s about other stuff to but a large part of it is the mince pies right? In any case it’s definitely not Christmas without them.

Cranberry, Orange, Dark Chocolate & Coconut Cookies - Bakemas Day 1

Here we go again, bakemas 2.0 and just like last year I’m still not mentally prepared and I’m already incredibly sleepy, probably my own fault for trying to fit too many things in. So instead of curling up in bed and watching a Christmas film I have coffee, one of these cookies and a hot lamb on my lap because it is pretty darn cold at the moment. I mean if you can’t be asleep coffee and cookies isn’t a bad second option, especially these cookies.

Cranberry & Clementine Quinoa Salad

Christmas is over and I feel like I was so busy this year I didn’t have time to enjoy it. Mental note for next year: be more organised! Maybe I should start making Christmas cards now, that’s something I always run out of time to do; I’m sure that’s very idealistic thinking I can’t imagine I’ll actually start doing that. So after 24 days straight I took three whole days off and in those three days I spent entirely too much time thinking about this blog, whoops, there goes my "time off"! It took me a long time to get round to making this, I’m pretty sure I’ve had this idea stacked away in the back of my brain for about 3 months and I think the only reason it took me so long is because I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. I know that sounds crazy, why come up with the idea if you don’t think you’ll like it (I seem to be good at that) but for some reason I always think I don’t like Clementine’s but whenever I eat them I really enjoy them. As a kid I wasn’t a fan of the texture so the idea puts me off, my sister and I used to suck the juice out and leave the rest. I also really dislike going about my daily life and someone peeling a Clementine in the near vicinity of me, the smell really bothers me, not that I don’t like the smell it just bothers me a little. Is this making any sense? Anyway Clementine’s in salads are my new favourite thing, just staring at these pictures makes me want to go make a quinoa salad with Clementine’s in. I'm glad a friend told me that it sounds good because I found this ridiculously delicious, way more than I could have ever expected. This wasn’t actually the plan when I came up with this but after eating this I realised it’s the perfect salad for leftover meat, the mix of the cranberry and clementine would go to well with turkey or ham. It would also be a good serving salad for a party, cranberry sauce on the side. If you don't want to add meat and you want a little protein sunflower seeds are tasty with this (I forgot to photograph that bit I was too busy eating).

Wensleydale & Cranberry Turkey Burgers with Tangy Sautéed Slaw - Bakemas Day 15

Can we take a second to talk about how flippin’ cute these cocktail sticks are? I’ve been seriously lacking in the “Christmasy looking shots” department and while these burgers were under the grill I found a bunch of those, what are they called, table confetti? As you can see these are highly sophisticated confetti trees stuck on cocktail sticks, did I just shatter the illusion that I came prepared? I’m back to burgers, and in the Christmas spirit they’re turkey burgers with Wensleydale and cranberry cheese. Can you buy Wensleydale anywhere else other than the UK? I only thought about it after I finished making these. Anyway Wensleydale is definitely one of my favourite cheeses, but what’s really nice about it when you use it on burgers is it doesn’t run off, it melts but stays pretty much in shape which means if you’re grilling your burgers half of it doesn’t end up in the bottom of the pan. Weirdly one of my favourite parts of this is the slaw; I would eat a plate of it just on its own but the tangy sweet vegetables go so well with the rest of the flavours. If there’s some left after burger assembling you can have it on the side or just stuff more in your burger which is what I ended up doing, and if you’re a big cranberry fan eating this with cranberry sauce makes it even yummier according to my mum.

Brie, Cranberry & Caramelised Onion Toasted Sandwich - Bakemas Day 13

It’s sandwich Sunday! Actually I think this is only the second sandwich I’ve posted on here and the likelihood I posted that on a Sunday is slim but it sounds like it would be a great segment. I think I can finally take a bit of a break tomorrow, although I say break, that break includes tidying, sewing, present related things and a blog post that still needs to be put up. What I really mean is I can spend all day in pyjamas and not in the kitchen which would be a nice change of scenery.

I made this seasonal delight for my mum, I only made myself a half sandwich which looked pretty sorry for itself but it blew my expectations to smithereens! I wasn’t expecting it to be quite as moorish, is that a bad thing to say about your own food ideas? Well it’s pretty quick to whip together and would actually taste really good with turkey leftovers in as well, someone try that out, turkey leftovers aren’t much of a thing in my house.

Grilled Nectarine, Blue Cheese and Walnut Salad with a Cranberry Vinaigrette

I kind of went off salads this summer, I got into the mind set of them being boring and a little mundane and unless there were sausages involved I probably wasn't feeling it. So to spice the salad up abit I racked my brains and came up with this. The original salad was actually going to have sliced roasted tomatoes in it but the idea of using the oven as well as the hob seemed like too many pans to get dirty for me to make this everyday so I scratched that idea and actually think it was probably for the best. This might also be the strangest looking vinaigrette I've ever made, I'm not even sure if most people would even class this as a vinaigrette but it tastes pretty vinaigrette-esk to me.

Cranberry, white chocolate and orange Doughnut Muffins

Leftover cranberry sauce? fear no more! I feel like this idea came to me in a dream or something although I'm sure it was probably just a random thought. I'll be honest, I'm not a giant fan of cranberry sauce so although I knew people would like them I was a little apprehensive to try these but oh my! I was shocked at how tasty they were when I bit into them.