South West Food Bloggers Exeter Meet Up 8 Jan 2011

A reminder that a group of us are meeting upstairs at Boston Tea Party, Exeter on 8 Jan 2011, shall we say 2pm?  I seem to remember that Choclette, Liz, Matthew, me and one other (can't remember who) are coming....any other takers?  Looking forward to it!

Enjoy the festive period and make sure you eat ten tons of super-scrummy food!

Gingerbread House - From Flat Pack to Luxury Home

We bought a 'flat-pack' gingerbread house from Lori at Shute Fruit (appearing at a Farmers' Market in Devon near you) for a very reasonable £4.  This included a recipe for Royal Icing and a few guidance tips on assembly. This was far easier (and less swearing) than IKEA furniture.  We made sure the icing was pretty sticky and not too drippy and held each wall in place for a few minutes, even though we were extremely eager to get on with the sweet decoration.

We were pretty pleased with the results - this was a joint effort with my 9 and 11 year old kids.

 This one was from 2007, and although adorable, you can see that we weren't master builders at that stage:

I can't resist one more picture of the 2010 effort.  11 year old daughter made the additional gingerbread tree and reindeer.  Sweets from various sweet shops - wish we still had Woolworths Pick and Mix!