Some baking accomplished ...

 Well, I just couldn't help but make those Sweet Potato Garlic Knot rolls.  I planned to make burgers for dinner on Friday night so I made one extra big roll for Gus and made the other dinner roll size.

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 I made beef burgers with mince, mixed herb, onion, an egg and dried stuffing mix, salt and pepper.  Gus declared it the best gourmet burger ever and loved the rolls.

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Saturday was a very lazy day for me.  I basically got up, pottered around, showered at about 10am then put on fresh pyjamas and just lazed the day away.  I think you need to do that every now and again.  I watched the last Harry Potter (Deathly Hallows Pt 2) movie and just stayed inside as it was quite a hot day out.

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 After saying that I needed to do some Christmas baking during this coming week, I decided that there is no time like the present.  I didn't really fancy working each day then coming home to bake.  So I got stuck in.

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First up, these super easy Christmas Puddings - I made a dozen in about 10 minutes flat!

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 Next up, Cherry Shortbreads with festive cherries.

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 Then I thought I'd make plain sugar dusted shortbreads.  The recipe requires rice flour (which I knew I had bought recently).  I found the packet, mixed up the dough then happened to look at the top of the pack.  Expiry December 2008!!  Now I know it probably would have been alright, but I just couldn't bring myself to use the dough so I tossed it in the bin.  Then I went hunting for the box of rice flour I knew I had bought only recently.  Found it further back in my pantry - phew!  So I began again...

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 The recipe was not the best, for some reason the dough wouldn't come together nicely and when I rolled it out between 2 sheets of Gladbake, it stuck and wouldn't come away from the paper.  Grrr!  I added more flour and kneaded it more then let it rest in the fridge... tried again and it was just not very co-operative.

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 I perservered and made snowflakes and christmas trees and ended up throwing about 1/3 of the dough out, I was just too stuffed to battle with it any longer.  I noted on the recipe (in a book) that is was "no good, do not use again"!

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 I finally finished and got tidied up just in time for Gus to start on dinner.  There was sugar and dough crumbs everywhere!  Yick!

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 I bagged everthing up in cello bags to keep them fresh - I'll show you when I put the gift bowls together, how they look. This extra bag is destined for Brianna as she loves these biscuits.

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Finally, Gus made the Tandoori Chicken and a delicious salad of tomato, cucumber, celery, onion with a lemon garlic dressing with croutons tossed in with it (both pictured in these books).  It was yummy!

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I also made my Christmas pudding, but that is another post entirely.

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Cheers - Joolz