I decided to try and make some new and interesting Christmas treats today. Here's what i came up with:

Marshmellow Christmas Trees on a stick. Thread 2 or 3 marshmellows onto a stick. I used skewers with the pointy bit chopped off. Then I made some icing starting with white and drizzled it onto the marshmellows. Then I dipped the marshmellow into various 100s and 1000s. We also used green icing and orange icing.  I think the green ones looked the best for Christmas.  I also chopped up some white ‘Milky Bars’ and dipped some of the marshmellows into them. The recipe I had said to use melted chocolate to dip the marshmellows into and then add green coloured shredded coconut, but the icing worked well so that my kids could eat them too.







Marshmellow slice – made the base using the marshmellow slice recipe in the Fedup book.  Once it was cooked I put in a separate bowl,...

As we don’t have a butcher nearby who can make us suitable sausages we have until now gone with out. If I had gone a distance, I could have bought them but then I had the problem of needing to use them quickly to prevent an amine build up.  We really only wanted them for special occasions so it was not worth the hassle of trying to get hold of them.  A while ago, a member from one of the forums I am on talked about using collagen casings from www.bakeandbrew.com.au so I finally decided to give it ago.

 I used my new thermomix to mix up the vegetables and meat into the right consistency.  Then we thought – ok how do we get the sausage mixture into the casings. Hmm!! We nearly ended it all there as I had thought maybe I could spoon it in but clearly this was not going to be possible. Then I got the idea of using an icing piping bag. It worked really well. It worked best with two of us doing it and the kids loved sitting there watching the process....

Really quick to make and delicious to eat. Buy some sweet crust Pastry Pantry pastry if gluten free or other tolerated pastry. Use a glass or mug to cut circle size pieces out of the pastry and gently press them into a muffin tray. Then cut out circles for lids of the pies and leave them aside.

Put baking paper over the bases and put them in the oven as instructed on the packet to cook. After about 10min you take the baking paper off and cook for another 5min or so.  Take the pies out of the oven, allow to cool and then place in desired ingredients. We used mashed up tinned pear and a few small slices of banana mixed with a tiny amount of brown sugar, but you could really use any tolerated fruit or even custard. Gently press lids onto filled bases and put back in the oven to cook until lids are golden brown. Pull out and serve hot or cold. They are so good!

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