Extreme Baking Week - Tuesday

Tuesday was pastry day, according to my plan. But first I made the two batches of shortbread, one batch of ginger nuts and the triple choc chip biscuits from Monday's list :-) These last are supposed to have one pack each of plain, milk and white choc chips, but I couldn't find the white packs I *knew* were there somewhere.... so this batch has two plain packs instead. And yes, I found the white ones as soon as the biscuits were in the oven :-)

Then I got on with the pastry! A dozen mini cheese and onion quiches, a new recipe for me and so yummy that not all of them made it to the freezer - I will be doing another batch of those on Thursday, along with a batch with a different filling. Then came an experiment with some frozen sausagemeat stuffing (from last Christmas!) and some frozen puff pastry (also from last year!) - can you tell I don't do pastry stuff very often??? I thawed both ingredients and cut the block of stuffing in half horizontally to make two thin pieces, then cut the pastry sheet in half, laid the sausagemeat on top of one pastry half and covered with the other, sealed the edges. As usual with my puff pastry experiments the base didn't cook well and I had to turn it upside down and return to the oven for 15 minutes or so...... Well it tasted OK, but doesn't look too appealing, so no photo of that one!

Another new recipe to finish with - mini lemon surprise pies. These are made using a mini muffin tray - a pastry shell , with lemon curd in the bottom, then a sponge mix on top. Absolutely scrummy - had to prise them out of DH's hands in order to freeze them :-) I made two more lots of the sweet pastry, to make jam surprise and chocolate surprise versions, and cooked up some diced apples for mini apple pies. By then it was time to grab one of my previously frozen meals (bolognese sauce) - you don't think I am doing any actual meal cooking this week do you.......??? So the surprise and the apple pies will be baked on Wednesday.

Not a bad day, and I think I have ended it with less catch-up to do tomorrow than I did on Monday, so hey, I must be making progress!

Oh and I have been asked what on earth I am going to do with all this stuff...... We have a Christmas party every year, and the guests get a basket of biscuits to take home with them. This contain a dozen pieces each of shortbread, choc biscuits, gingernuts, vanilla fudge, choc fudge and a small Christmas cake. Four families at the party this year - so four baskets - therefore I need at least four dozen of all the above items before I even start to think about our own stuff! Oh and I have promised to bring cakes to work for Christmas ........... :-)