"A good ol' fashioned family Christmas" - Clark Griswold

2016 was the year that pretty much my whole family came together to have a proper big Christmas gathering. With me having 3 brothers and 1 sister, living all over the worldm and at that point they had 10 kids between them, our Christmases have never been a small affair and not one we tend to do at one persons house.

This year we had our Christmas Day at a restaurant in Norwich called The Georgian Townhouse and rented out their biggest room. It was quite the event and we stayed there all day, from early lunchtime to late in the evening, being plied with food and drinks all day long. A day I am sure we shall repeat one day.

For the occasion I made some cupcakes, which I shall come on to later.

This year for Christmas I tried making these lollipops. I think it was at this time that I started using Pinterest, so the world of possible baking and decoration ideas were a feast for my eyes as I started to pin things left, right and center. This was one of the first things I tried on from there.

Try it here: onelittleproject.com/how-to-make-candy-cane-hearts

They turned out okay but were super laborious and really hard to get the chocolate to stay in the little candy cane hearts.

So back to Christmas Day and the cupcakes I made. I used my regular Hummingbird Bakery gingerbread recipe to make ALL THESE GINGERBREAD MEN..my gingerbread army. I stupidly made all 4 batches at the same time in the same ceramic Kenwood Chef bowl and it broke the bowl. Like in 2 broke the bowl. Whoops!

I got the inspiration for these cakes from Pinterest and use the recipe below for the cupcake.

Try it here: butternutbakeryblog.com/gingerbread-cupcakes/

As you can see they came out a deep rich color and really looked super decadent on the table...although the pink cupcake carrying boxes detracted from the overall look somewhat.

It was this year I tried to make a yule log for in the evening at home. I remember making one at school as part of Food Technology class and it hadn't been that bad. This one however, no great. It didn't roll properly and ended up with it just being a 5 thin layer cake as they all broke as I rolled it over. Oh well, buttercream on hand to cover it up.