Dulce De Leche Lava Cakes

It’s almost New Year’s Eve and if you’re looking for a sweet treat to make and have to ring in the New Year then we have just the treat for you! Dulce De Leche lava cakes are absolutely divine. They are super sweet but so yummy.

You will need...

1 2/3 cups of Dulce De Leche

½ cups of melted butter

2 egg yolks

2 whole eggs

¼ cup of flour

Butter and flour to line your ramekins

Mix the Dulce De Leche and the melted butter.

In a separate bowl, mix the eggs and yolks and then add in the Dulce De Leche mix.

Add in the flour a little at a time and mix well.

Line the ramekins with the butter and then the flour.

Pour the batter into the ramekins.

Bake the cakes for 12-14 minutes at 425 degrees. You want the cakes to look jiggly. You can cook them more if you want to but the more set they are, the less molten they will be!

Once they have cooled ever so slightly then use a sharp knife to run around the edges of the cakes. Flip over onto a plate and then top with some whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. You can drizzle with chocolate sauce too if you have some.

Fun Gift Wrapping

With just a few days left before Christmas, many of us are probably scrambling to wrap the gifts we bought for others. I know that’s the way I usually am! If you want to spruce up your gifts a bit this year then we can help. I know it’s the thought that counts for the gift, but when it comes to the “wrapper” it’s kind of nice to have something a little bit more exciting and different. Some times when I get a fancy wrapped gift I get truly excited just for the gift wrap and I don’t want to open it; it could almost be a decoration. I think it’s so much fun wrapping gifts especially if you do it in an interesting way. I often will find different shaped boxes to wrap my gifts in, maybe add some rocks inside etc. to make it seem like something totally opposite from what’s actually in there. You can also wrap the gift in your own homemade wrapping which we shared with you a couple of Christmas’ ago - see it here.

You can also turn your gift into a decoration to make it look like something else, like these ones...

After looking at your gift, decide on a “thing” to turn it into. Some shaped gifts are easier to turn into things than others.

Be creative. Start off by wrapping your presents in a plain brown wrap or newsprint and then go from there.

If you wrapped coloured paper around the gift then you can draw things onto it to give it depth like seen in the fireplace gifts. You can also paint it or colour it with felt if you prefer, like the doghouse and car. The giant sled has some cardstock attachments and some colouring on it.

To alter your gift shape a bit, you can use cardstock to add on shapes as most of these gifts have.

You can attach tissue, sticks, cardstock cut outs, or even felt/fabric like how the stockings are on one of the fireplace mantles.

You can also attach things on the outside to elevate your gift.

Wrap your presents first in the wrapping paper of your choice.

For the angels paint a face on cardstock. The body and the wings are made of wide gold ribbon with the wire edge so you can position them as you like. A skinny ribbon gets attached on for the arms. Then used gold braid as accent but you can also use it for the hair. Just pull it apart gently and attached as desired. Glue it all on with a glue gun directly onto the wrapped gift.

The candle gift was also wrapped first and then the candles were attached afterwards. To make the candles, little cylinder tubes were wrapped in red tissue paper (you can make some from cardboard or cardstock if you have nothing like that hanging around your house). The holly used to cover the ends of the candles was real but you can use fake as well. Then attach flames made from shiny gold wrapping paper and adorn with little festive bits like bells, ribbon, bows etc.

However you wrap your presents will be much appreciated I’m sure, but if you want to try something a little different now you have some ideas to run with!

Snowflake Shortbread Cookie

It’s cookie day! It’s the perfect day to start your Christmas baking. I know some people may have started a while ago, but I think it’s the perfect time to make some baked goods to nibble during the lead up to Christmas. You can also make them ahead of time and freeze them for gifts or for Santa and Christmas day celebrations.

Shortbread cookies are one of the traditional Christmas cookies. I have always done the circular ones with the fork indents on the top, but today we are making a bit fancier shortbread. We are making snowflake shaped cookies and some we’ll leave plain, but some will get a little chocolate surprise on them!

Shortbread Cookie Recipe:

This is a really easy recipe. All you need is butter, berry sugar, and flour.

Start off by creaming 2 cups of butter/margarine.

Add in the 1 cup of sugar slowly.

Now add in almost 4 cups of flour, gradually. When I say almost 4 cups I mean almost. Add in the 3 cups and then on the last cup, don’t quite fill it to the top. A full cup would be too much.

Since we’re making the cookies into snowflakes (we tried a few other shapes too), knead the dough and make it into two separate balls, and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight. If you don’t plan on using a cookie cutter to cut out shapes, roll the dough into “logs” and wrap in plastic.

On a floured surface, roll out the dough and cut into shapes. If you made the “logs” then slice them into cookies.

Place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and bake at 300 degrees for 20-23 minutes.

Once they have cooled a bit, you can leave them as is and serve or package them up or you can take them to the next level and dip and drizzle with the chocolate(s) of your choice. 

Allow the chocolate to harden before serving or putting away.

DIY Ornaments

Once December 1^st hits, then it’s time to put up the Christmas tree. Mine went up this weekend. Usually it’s a work in progress as the first step is putting up the tree and then the next few days and weeks, we add ornaments to it.

We thought that it might be a fun idea to make some ornaments this week. In the past we have painted ceramic and wooden shapes, but this year we thought we’d use the plastic ornaments that you can find at the craft store which open up. We’re going to open them up and fill them to decorate as well as paint them.

Again, this one is a really inexpensive craft to make with items that you can easily get at the dollar store or probably even find at home.

Painting the ornaments takes more time so you’ll want to do this further in advance if you want to give them away or hang them up. We’ve picked a variety of colours for paint to use; some are Christmasy and some are not. We also have a bunch of different sizes of brushes and some sponges as well. You can pre-sketch out some designs or you can free style it and come up with your design as you go. Do whatever you like. Here’s what we came up with...

This is a drip paint ornament. What we've done is pick a couple of matching colours and dripped them into the ornaments and moved the paint around by turning the ornaments. We did this process a few times to get all of the area covered. Then we let them hang upside down overnight to drain out the excess paint and this is what we got...

Another option to is to fill the ornaments with curled ribbons, shredded snow, larger glitter bits, small punched shapes, or coloured paper or paper from old books so that you can see the words.

For both, you can put ribbons/bows on the outside to adorn the finished ornaments.  

Now you can hang them up in your tree or around your house or you can make a bunch and hand them out as gift this year.