Christmas (Recipe) Cards

Obviously, it is nearly Christmas. I’ve been sick of it since approx October, and plan to spend the festive season asleep. The Traditional and Celebration section of Marguerite Patten’s recipe cards includes some baffling seasonal gems:

Yes! It’s the marshmallow bauble stand you’ve been waiting for! And if that’s happiness, god help us all.  And why are there rings stuck to the branches?

A stunning combo of ice cream, booze and dried fruit, contained by a fence of sponge fingers. Potentially quite nice, but how does stuff like this get conceived?

This is a Danish cake, the reverse tells me, which leads me to conclude that Danes don’t give much of a stuff about Christmas. The reverse also says ‘Decorate as wished’, here the decorator wished to make a doll out of a fir cone, some paper and a cherry tomato. Who can say what any of us would do in the same situation. We mustn’t be too quick to pass judgment.

All I’m going to do is quote the frankly inadequate instructions for decorating this marvellous cake:

Mix remaining butter icing with melted chocolate, and pipe shape of doors, windows, etc. Dip apple slices in lemon juice, arrange as roof tiles, with marshmallows as ‘chimneys’. Decorate with silver balls.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!

Recipe Card Special – Attack of the Prawns

Prawns are delicious. For instance I had some amazing shrimp buzara (nb, not my photo)  in Croatia, massive prawns in a messy messy tomato sauce. I could eat many many many prawns and not get tired HOWEVER they are not attractive to look upon, looking as they do like an alien race plucked from the depths of both the sea and time itself. So it baffles me that so many of the recipe cards I have feature the prawn as garnish. I present here a selection for your consideration:

Prawns ruining an otherwise ok-looking quiche, sorry, Fiesta Pie.

Nothing about this recipe is good.

A CLASSIC.

I don’t know what any of these foods are and I’m scared.

And finally, this. Just this:

Danish Open Sandwiches

I wanted to feature a Bonfire Night related recipe card today but I have none, so instead here are some Danish Open Sandwiches, artfully laid out on someone’s kitchen floor.

I have a whole book of Danish sandwich recipes, called The Danwich Book. I’ll make some one day, I imagine, but in the meantime have a smashing bonfire night!

Bonus recipe card – Hallowe’en Cake

Happy Halloween Everyone! Why not make this cake? Nothing screams halloween like, er, like, um WHAT is that? A traffic cone painted black?

Bacon Fruit Kebabs

Who else spotted the cauliflower?

Milk Chicken

Yeah, so this happened.

Also, is that slices of…banana on top of the…sauce?

Easter Egg

Nothing celebrates the resurrection of little baby cheeses like some mutant chicks and a chocolate lump decorated with, I’m guessing, Copydex, ball bearings and a dead flower:

Sleigh Cake

NONE of this cake is actually edible, apart from the beard on the gnome*, which is made from spun cocaine (c’mon, it was the seventies!)

*I refuse to accept that is Santa.

Simnel Cake

AKA ‘Massacre at the Hatchery.

Coral Island Eggs recipe

As requested by in the comments on this post, here’s the recipe for Coral Island Eggs:

For 4-8 people you need:

8oz peeled shrimps

2oz butter or pork fat

2 egg whites

2 teaspoons Chinese (Shao Shing) wine, or sherry

2 teaspoons ginger juice from preserved ginger seasoning

8 slices thick white bread

4 hardboiled eggs

deep fat for frying

For garnish:

Parsley

1 Finely chop the shrimps and mix with butter

2 Add 1 egg white and mix in sherry, ginger juice and seasoning

3 Cut bread into diamond shapes, place a small mound of mixture on each piece

4 Halve hard-boiled eggs lengthwise, place 1 half, flat side down, on each mound, pressing mixture firmly round base

5 Brush all over with second egg white

6 Fry in deep fat, egg side downwards, turn over and continue cooking until bread is golden brown

7 Remove from fat, drain on absorbent paper