Holiday prep.: The Marshmallow and the Pudding

I am in love with my kitchen.

Even though it was a stay at home in my PJs kind of day, I still managed to do a little bit of baking.

I made some plumb pudding for Christmas by modifying a combination of one of Mrs Beeton's recipes and a recipe I found here (a sight that seems to have vanished over night but I'll link it here just in case it comes back - it was really awesome and had all sorts of holiday foods that are free of the common and not so common allergies). It's so yummy. Only instead of making one pudding as I expected, it instead made five. I'm not complaining.

I also made marshmallows. As icing sugar is out, I dusted the marshmallows with cocoa. I think that corn starch might have worked just as well. They taste incredibly sweet and I just can't stop eating them. In fact, I'm off to eat some more pre-breakfast marshmallows right now. Chow.

Holiday Prep.: The icing

Does anyone think that Marshmallows would be good for making the gingerbread house? I was thinking that it might dry hard and act as an icing. Thoughts?

I found a recipe here that I thought would work. It uses...

3 Tbs. (21 g) gelatin
1/2 cup water

2 cups maple syrup

1/4 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. vanilla extract

Holiday prep.: The Gingerbread house

I've been working hard on getting ready for Christmas. It's going to be quite the adventure making a 'traditional' Christmas that I can participate in, especially giving my food limitations.

Foods to be excluded include soy, sugar (from the cane plant), all dairy products (save from goat), peanuts processed grains, barley, and eggs. Foods to be limited included yeast, garlic, sesame, tomatoes, and potatoes. I tell you, this is one heck of a challenge. I was tempted to simply let everyone else have bought treats, but it's so depressing to watch everyone eat foods that I use to love. It reminds me of how ill I am and that's the last thing I want to think about at Christmas.

So, I've been baking gingerbread. I took the ginger snap recipe from Vegan a Go Go and modified it to become a ginger bread that I can eat. It's really yummy and if I roll it out extra thin then I can cut it into shapes that will be hung on the tree.

Of course this is just a practice run to see if it can be done. What I really want to do is to make a gingerbread house that Peggy Sue (my on line name for her) and I can decorate together a few days before Christmas. Which leads to the next challenge: How do I make icing that does not have any sugar in it? I've seen lots of recipes for sugar free frosting but all of them so far have other forbidden foods like Splenda (made from sugar) or sugar free pudding mix (made with soy). I've seen one recipe that might be acceptable at Nook & Pantry that uses only cream cheese and maple syrup; however, I don't know how sutible it would be for a gingerbread house. I can make the cheese from goats milk, but would it hold up the house? Would it go bad quickly? Would I have to keep it in the fridge and if I did, would the gingerbread go soggy?

As I understand it, sugar does three things for icing - it makes it taste sweet, it helps to harden the icing and it helps to preserve the icing so that it lasts longer. How do I get these three qualities without using the one ingredient that is so good at producing them? Any thoughts?

Hi all,

Still alive. Actually, I'm doing well compared to last time we chatted.

Thanks to everyone who sent their well wishes my way lately. Dad just installed the internet in my room. It's a really long cable that goes all the way from the router, through the walls, under the floor and up into my room. This may or may not lead to regular blogging. I'm not going to put that pressure on myself just yet. I have the most ridiculous amount of catching up to do with paperwork and such like that.

(yes, I copy/pasted that from my other blog. It just means that I thought it important enough to say twice)

I have a favour to ask. I have a friend coming to stay with us for Christmas. She's lovely and from Japan. I want to make it a very Western Christmas, but I have two problems which you can help me solve. First. I've never had an ideal Christmas. Holidays are just not something we do in our house. Sure, we have feasts and get together and exchange presents. We don't need much excuse for that. But we don't decorate or stuff like that. Second. Well, there are financial limitations which mean that I cannot go in for the kind of holidays that the TV adds tell me I should. I want to have a home made Christmas. I need advice as to how to do this. I'm knitting stockings for us all and have a grand fir marked out for cutting down on Christmas eve. I've ordered the ham. I've made mincemeat that I can eat (and it's so yummy!), but I haven't found a plumb pudding recipe that I can modify successfully yet.

What I would like to know is what else can I do for Christmas? How can I decorate the tree without buying anything comercial? I was going to string popcorn. What else can I do with the tree? For that matter, how do I stop the tree from drying out and dropping all the needles? I want to keep it up for the twelve nights. What do you do for Christmas/winter holidays?

Hi all,

Still alive. Actually, I'm doing well compared to last time we chatted.

Thanks to everyone who sent their well wishes my way lately. Dad just installed the internet in my room. It's a really long cable that goes all the way from the router, through the walls, under the floor and up into my room. This may or may not lead to regular blogging. I'm not going to put that pressure on myself just yet. I have the most ridiculous amount of catching up to do with paperwork and such like that.