Nostalgic and colourful, these sturdy ironstone salad plates inspired a delightful few days of baking.
I toyed with the idea of making a gingerbread house and even went so far as to bake a gingerbread bundt cake. Nice, but somehow lacked panache.
The houses make you smile. Don’t they look like a child has drawn them? Hmmm. They’re about the level of my cookie decorating skills. Let’s have some fun.
Let’s make house cookies. And a cake! And put them together. They can be the centrepiece for the table.
Three days later, a Gingerbread Village Cake had come to life. There’s one thing about all this social distancing; it leaves plenty of scope for time-consuming projects, which have the added benefit of elevating one’s baking skills and jettisoning wandering and impatient thoughts.
The details on the plates are nostalgically captivating; my first car was a red Volkswagen bug. Not quite at the cutting edge in modern conveniences, it lacked both gas gauge and heater. But it was great on gas and would go anywhere regardless of the weather.
The artists got the colours right for the era of VW Bug. That ice-blue was very popular.
Off to Grandma’s House, we go!
The table didn’t need much in the way of extras—some cheerful napkin rings.
A bit of greenery.
Two sets of salt and pepper shakers fit in naturally. Snowy Trees…
… and snowmen.
With dangling red scarves.
And some fun blue tumblers. For big glasses of milk to enjoy with the cake.
Christmas is for kids, big and small.
And snowmen, of course.
And lots and lots of goodies to eat.
Thanks for calling in!
This is so beautiful and you’re the only one that I know that can make a masterpiece like this. You really do have talent and patience. Your grandchildren will really enjoy this during the holidays. Such fun! Enjoy the holidays
Thanks so much, Maura. You’re too kind. Said grandkids were here yesterday making sugar cookies and decorating them with icing and sprinkles. Happily each of them was using a rimmed baking sheet to hold their masterpieces under construction. It helped contain the sugar crunch disaster
Dear Helen,
Greetings from rainy Biarritz! My, you have some patience to construct that, and I’d love to see how you serve it. Looks like it would be messy.
I may have to take a stab at Nagi’s pavlova Christmas tree, though. I think I can just manage stacking meringue discs with cream between…
Spot on, Beatrice. It was very messy to dismantle; I took off enough cookies to slice the cake, and that stayed intact nicely. Then I served cake with cookies on the side.
I adore pavlova. It’s so versatile, too. Also very messy…
Enjoy Biarritz. I hope it dries up soon!
Wow wee! Impressive cake!!!
It went over very well and was hoovered back in record time. The cookies stayed quite crisp, to my happy surprise.