Belated baking

So it's days and days after Christmas, but I'm getting around to the Christmas Baking post. It's 39 degrees celcius outside today, so the only gardening going on is lots of water to keep the plants alive (tomorrow - NYE - is forecast a whopping 43 degrees celcius).
So, as you might have gathered, Christmas to me means going crazy in the kitchen. I like to give baked goods as gifts.


SP helped in her own way.


This year I started with orange and pistachio biscotti, and almond biscotti.


Then I made Viennese fingers (recipe)


And Viennese 'drops' too.


The cookie trees were a bit of a hit. I was going to do all vanilla cookies (recipe), and then I got bored and added in gingerbread too, all iced with lemon icing.


The leftover biscuits made a bigger tree, which we took to my mother-in-law's house for her annual Christmas Eve birthday party.




D made his famous Christmas puddings.


He also used my leftover biscuit dough to make pastry for mince pies by re-kneading the dough with an egg.


Everything, naturally, was delicious. Perhaps the best of all was the bumper raspberry crop out of my MIL's garden.


Merry Christmas to all readers, and may you have a Happy New Year. All the best for 2011!