Merry Christmas - Red Velvet Cake

For past couple of days I had been running like a headless chicken... I hear "yeah me too" from you all....Well reason was mum arrived on Sunday and she is going to staying with me for three months "Happy Dance". I was in rush to clear the chaos, attending Christmas parties, organising my unorganised schedule and climate being super cold here, I had to take some extra efforts for mum's warm cloths (it's going to reach -30 this weekend). Thought I packed mum with warmers, snow storm horrified her! She ended up saying when will I go back to India? on the day she arrived :O. And since I didn't want her to rush back immediately to India, took a day off saying working from home, to give her some company and make her feel better but ended up making red velvet cake ...mum cleared up the whole kitchen mess! Lucky me isn't it? :)) You see I was actually working! (My boss doesn't know I have a food blog )...ha ha

Anyways, Red velvet cake was in my do list for many months, finally it got chance for this Christmas. Being honest it wasn't red but brick red velvet cake, but the texture, flavor was awesome. Mum loved it, I know mum's are biased to daughters......I handed half cake to my Finnish God Mother and she asked for the recipe ..big yay! so I'm basically not bothered about the color failure...

Here is my Santa Clause with some gift and a piece of brick red velvet cake wishing you Merry Christmas. Have a peaceful and fun Christmas with your Family and friends..Greeting from Finland :)

PS: I did fondant flowers by myself, learned from this video. Made white flowers and painted with red food color!

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Santa is on his way - Rum fruit cake

All set and ready? enjoying the bling bling and the redness?. Oh I'm loving it. City has completely turned white and with minimum day light (no complaints) it is glowing with numerous lights and huge decorated Christmas trees. It's fantastic to see many merry people around, shopping, exchanging gifts, excited about their vacation, pretty much the list goes endless. Am sure it's the same with you guys too! I already received three Christmas gifts :)), so during the weekend was wrapping mine, all to be give this week, excited! I love exchanging gifts and may be I sound like school kid, but I'm very impatient until the gift boxes are opened ;p

What have you all been baking as Christmas home made gifts?...I made rum  fruit cake, one of my fav cakes, have made it already 6 times still feels fresh whenever I bake them. Have made them as individual muffins, easy and fancy to pack as gifts....This cake has longer life time (well packed and stored-one month). The taste and flavor enhances as it ages, personally I prefer to have them after couple of days. As always I can't resist warm cakes out of the oven but have noticed the difference as the days goes by.

Ah is anyone missing in the pictures below? Yes Santa!...He is all set and ready, reindeer is waiting for him... very soon he will visit ur house with loads of gifts and happiness. Stay tuned :) 

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Missing Colors? Pumpkin Scones

Warning :) Post is heavily loaded with pictures
How are you guys managing with cold and darkness? Are you missing colours? Very strangely this year's darkness is having a huge impact on me. People living on bright side of the world, I'm plain jealous. After one of the most freakish week, I was completely torn off, wanted to be in two place with contradictory situation...this made me go all heebie-jeebies. Basically was giving myself a hard time. Now I have weighted my new priorities, understood the existence of tricky question, tried not to pervert and in a way balancing my inner book! Exuded some repulsive force to be less bothersome and slowly generating few small packets of positive ripples on the surface which is taking me to otherwise happy pond. During all this process, though I have quieten for a while, Autumn colours was helping me out (was editing and clearing my hard drive which has been piling up from 2005 :O) since I was missing the colours. Here it is some fall pictures with pumpkin scone.

I made two version one was tradition sweet scone and another one I jazzed it up few dry chilly flakes and corriander and of course replaced sugar with salt :). Will start right away to catch up with all your post I missed! These Autumn pics are from my 2009 collection my 2010 autumn is here.

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