Our Christmas Open House

Aside from all that other baking I finally had all the baking to do for our holiday festivities. We had a little open house and this was what I put out. Lots of h'ourderve type stuff (meat, cheese, crackers, veg and dip, spring rolls, meatballs), but I rebaked all the goodies I baked for the Christmas concert and then some.

I doubled the toppings on these as I found them on the thin side in the 9x13 pans I made for the Christmas concert that I had 1 1/2 x the recipe - raisin squares and lemon squares, I would quadruple the original recipe next time! The date squares and chocolate cookie buttons (biscotti like) didn't need any change, so I just made another recipe of those. I also made rumballs, which I ground for the first time with my Magic Bullet, the cake crumbs I dried in the oven. A little too fine though, so it was a little more difficult to get the ball to bind, but once it sat for a bit the moisture started to help; frangipan tarts, mincemeat tarts, reindeer antlers. I never got back around to making more shortbread or making the gingerbread house that I had planned to work on with the kids. The time just ran away from us all. We are almost finished all the goodies - only a few more rumballs to go. I did however buy fruit cake that turned out to be too dry - will buy from regular supplier next Christmas, and I also bought stolen, which I should have bought from the German supplier in our old neighbourhood :o( You eat and learn right? I wish I had pictures of my 28 pund turkey to share, but no one bothered to take a picture of dinner before it was devoured as I have always. This year I was too busy making sure everything was on the table and forgot all about it, until yesterday when I downloaded all the pictures. :oP