All the homemade Christmas people over here please, lets share our ideas :)

[BabyDubsEverywhere]

Do we have a 'Homemade Christmas Thread' going yet? Ive linked to last years below, I am determined to MAKE MAKE MAKE this year and bugger the responses

I need a fail safe mulled wine kit to give people please if anyone can help, Thankyou :)

Last years thread!

Oh, fantastic. It was hot but not boiling (because I'm a wuss about boiling sugary stuff). I bet it's fine.

Lavender shortbread sounds great.

I drank it neat the other day, should have had ice but I'd run out.

she - DH says it is very nice neat, but he's Russian so grew up with that. I think it would depend what you flavoured it with, but I'm doing an orange and lemon one and tested it on a mate - she said it was nice with tonic and very nice with orange or cranberry juice. If that helps! I think they'd be good for cocktails in general - saw a recipe for bramble gin with berries and crushed ice, and I might pass it on to my brother as I'm giving him the bramble vodka for Christmas.

LRD, i like the idea of giving the drinks with a recipe tp drink it, Im doing Thronton toffee vodka.....any suggestions?

LRD - would you mind Telling me how you pickled your plums please?! I've just been given a bag of very ripe plums that need using immediately and my freezer is already full of pear crumble!

Has anyone ever made their own version of Baileys? If so, can you post a recipe and tell me what you think of it? TIA.

Wow, two people saying things that aren't replies to my dumb questions, I feel like I've arrived!

I'm not sure about recipes for toffee vodka as I think I would just drink it! I imagine it'd make good cream-based cocktails though.

mog - sure, but it was a bit made up as I went along from 3 recipes none of which I wanted to follow exactly. But here goes:

800g plums
300g sugar
200 ml cider vinegar (I imagine any vinegar would work given what you do to it though)
About 20 black peppercorns
3 sticks cinnamon
3 bay leaves
2 stars of star anise

Sterilize your jars.

Halve the plums and take the stones out. Put them in a wide saucepan (it took two layers of mine.

Put the sugar and vinegar and spices together in a different pan. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 5 mins or so. Pour over the plums in their pan, and set the plum pan back on the heat. Bring to the boil and simmer for a couple of minutes.

Leave to steep for an hour or so then scoop the plum halves and spices out of the liquid (there'll be loads more as the juice comes out of the plums, and the plums will be a bit mushy but not totally shapeless). Discard the bay leaves.

Reduce the liquid by boiling hard for 15 mins or so.

Put the plums in jars, pour over the hot liquid, and seal.

I tasted them and they're nice - I'm going to buy a gammon joint for next sunday and try some as I had more than would go in my jars, but I like them. Hope you do. I tasted the liquid when it was cool to see if it was right for me, but I don't have much of a sweet tooth and you might want more sugar - you could add it before you boiled the liquid down, obviously.

That's great, thanks.

What does star anise look like? I have heard people mention it but have no clue what it is . Also, I went to buy cinnamon sticks yesterday and they were 50p each, does that sound right? [tight-arse emoticon]

Clean if you have Microsoft Word it's really easy to flip the image/text - Paste in your picture or create text in word art so it can be treated like a drawing, then go into the Draw menu and choose Rotate or Flip and then choose Flip Horizontal. Hope that helps!

Mogs cinnamon can be expensive, especially in supermarkets. I usually get mine in a greengrocer/deli where it is cheaper. And star anise is a brown star shaped pod like thing, about 2 cm across.

mog - oh, star anise is pretty! The wiki page has an ok picture here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illicium_verum

I've seen people spray them silver at christmas but I'm going to use them as they are, as little tags on ribbon. I've got one peeking out the side of each jar, too. They last years and don't go off, btw, but are strongly aniseed tasting so if you don't care for aniseed, I'd leave them out and just go with cinnamon.

50p each sounds very expensive for cinnamon to me - but I'm lucky that I have access to Indian food shops whenever I visit my parents near Leicester, and all spices are much cheaper (though come in huge bags too) there.

Now I have too many ideas to know where to start

Mogs it looks like this www.formaggiokitchen.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=659

If you have an Asian food store nearby they are miles cheaper for spices, incl cinnamon sticks.

Any Christmas sweets like fudge receipes please? :)

Thanks!

There used to be a fabulous spices stall in my local indoor Market but it closed down last year and one of the fruit and veg stalls in the Market seem to have taken over their stock. They used to be so much cheaper than the supermarkets but the new lot have obviously put their prices up.

I'll take a trip to another market next week and see what I can find.

Thanks LRD and Toria !! Glad to be joining the madhouse!! I feel like I will fit in just fine especially as I know feel the need to dress in red, green and gold and attach fairy lights to my jumper tiny bit over excited do you think??

entirely sensible behaviour imho

at lurking. My DH popped out today and came back to find I'd been sorting through the CDs of carols on while I was cooking ... I got an, erm, interesting look. I promise I won't put any on til, ooh, December 1st?

What theancientmarinator said. Yesterday I went through my little bag of novelty earrings to check all my Christmas ones had been put back properly and that my hairclips with bells on them didn't need mending.

I then watched Elf and Fred Claus...

DH doesn't know yet but has caught me watching Christmas episodes of boxsets. He thinks I'm watching them in order and just getting through seasons really quickly now I'm on ML... And I've had Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas in my head for days...

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way......
Lalalalalalalala

Can anyone tell me how long the lemon sugar scrub will last and whether it is better to use lemon oil or lemon juice?

No idea about lemon scrub but I was singing jingle bells all day Friday to my mindees!

fudge - I'm going to try this later, as I have a pot of clotted cream that needs using! if it's good, it will be a christmas one, too!

in the past I've made a white choc and macadamia fudge (which was ok), a macadamia and cranberry fudge (again, ok), nd a chocolate pistacio fudge (which was AMAZING). all recipes are adapatations froma cookbook called 'chocolate' that my mum gave me, no idea if it's still available!

I made a huge batch of apple butter yesterday, which smells lovely, but 4 of the jars didn't seal properly. I think I'll risk it though, there is so much sugar in the recipe, that I'd be impressed if anything could live on it for long. I will only give the 2 that did seal properly as gifts just to be on the safe side!!

I have to say thank you for this thread - I stumbled upon it at about 12noon and it's now gone 2pm and I'm still here looking, clicking links and making lists of what I'm going to make!!! Seriously though, money is really tight right now so this thread is such a Godsend.

Has anyone mentioned mint vodka? You just melt Fox's Glacier Mints (or equivalent) in vodka. It tastes like very strong mouthwash but is lovely!

Where do you buy your essential oils from? I've never bought them so have no idea where to look! I'm going to head to Wilko's on pay day to see if I can get some glass jars for hand scrub and go blackberrying for jam!

I do hope I can actually do it this time instead of having lots of good ideas- and then doing nothing!!! :(