Christmas was especially good this year. We were gifted with the return of relatives who had been away for a long time. After the obligatory group cracker pull, we settled down to a meal of cold seafood, crisp salads, and ham. The best thing about Christmas ham is that even while I’m rolled and stuffed like a turkey from all that eating, I can still be thinking about what to do with the ham leftovers. Hamwiches, ham salads, ham omelette, endless endless possibilities..

For dessert, I sauted off some cherries, allowed them to cool to room temperature, and piled them into a glass along with quarters of fresh lychee, young coconut flesh and coconut and moscato jelly. Young coconuts are fabulous because they taste so refreshing and don’t have too strong a flavour like the old coconuts (from which you get coconut cream and milk). The flesh of the young coconut is almost like a jelly itself; slippery, translucent and melt-in-your-mouth. After all that, would you believe, we also managed to have Christmas pudding with calvados custard.

And as it turns out, the “some computer thing” my mom got my brother for Christmas, was a Nintendo Wii. So that was our entertainment organised for the rest of the day!

On Boxing Day, we joined other family for a picnic at Lavender Bay. The weather was so beautiful that some chose later to adjourn to nearby Luna Park for a scream or two, while the rest of us lazed about on picnic rugs and later took a walk to have a peek at Wendy Whiteley’s secret garden.

I had lunch at a friend’s place over the weekend. She happens to make the most divine sweet things – most recently, a Noah’s Ark cake with little sugar animals – monkeys, lions, elephants. Clumsy me, I picked up an elephant to ooh and aah over it, and not only did the head drop off, but half of it’s ear also chipped off! So I don’t think delicate sugar art is really my thing.

Instead, for Habeas Brulee’s theme for SHF #26, I’ve raided my cupboard for some long-unused items. Along with a bag of coloured sugar and some maple sugar chips, I’ve used ye olde faithful icing sugar to decorate a batch of beautifully buttery shortbread biscuits. The biscuit is quite delicate with a nice snap to it, and an enhanced crunch and presentation factor thanks to the colourful sugar crystals. And might I add, a light dusting of icing sugar has managed to cure many a baking mistake of mine in the past. So here’s to the art of sugar therapy..

The recipe for these biscuits comes from Shannon Bennett’s My Vue. Instead of rolling each slice out individually as per the original recipe, I rolled and baked the dough as a large sheet, then stamped out the shapes after the shortbread was baked. The best part of making this, was nibbling on the trimmings!

Shannon Bennett’s Sable Biscuits :

450g plain flour
50g cornflour
400g butter, chopped into dice, at room temperature
200g icing sugar
4 egg yolks
pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 160’C. Sift the flour and cornflour into a mixing bowl. Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture and add the butter and sugar, work together with your fingertips until no hard lumps remain. Add the egg yolks and salt, drawing in the flour. Work until the dough resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Do not overwork. Roll the pastry into a log and refrigerate for several hours. Cut the dough into 6mm slices and briefly knead each slice. Roll each slice out to a thickness of 3mm; they will be extremely delicate. Place on a greaseproof paper-lined baking tray, allowing space for spreading. Bake for 10 minutes, or until just golden on the edges.

The theme for December’s WBW, hosted by Culinary Fool, is sparklers. A perfect theme, considering it’s summer over here in the Southern Hemisphere, and this summer, you will hopefully find me at any spare moment, on a deck chair with a generous glass of this in my hand : a 2006 Two Hands Brilliant Disguise Moscato.

I was introduced to this gorgeous fizzy little wine fairly recently and since then have been keen to let other people know about it. Pale to clear coloured and made from the white frontignac grape, it comes from the Barossa Valley in South Australia – a region reknowned for it’s wines (Jacob’s Creek and Wolf Blass being among the larger, more well known producers) and Maggie Beer’s Pheasant Farm. At 6.5% alc/vol, it’s a light, fun drink that’s not overly sweet and pairs really well with fruits like mango, lychees, honeydew and muskmelon.

When you’ve just come home from a long day at work, battling the crowds on the train and it’s so hot, the back of your shirt has been sticking to you all day, you’ll be glad to have a bottle of this waiting for you in the fridge!

Cheeeers!