Tag Archives: family

Handmade Christmas – cracking crackers!

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Christmas crackers are great, and an essential part of Christmas dinner in my house.  I mean, what’s not to like about adults wearing silly paper hats after a lovely meal and plenty of wine?  But the ones I’ve bought always seem to contain absolute rubbish which no one would ever want.  How about making your own, with the traditional silly paper hat and motto, but with the added bonus of a small, thoughtful gift, an after dinner chocolate, or both?  Well, it’s simple and fun, here’s how!

Handmade Christmas crackers

You will need:

  • Some cracker ‘blanks’, these are widely available from craft shops and on the internet in various sizes, colours and pack sizes.  I chose plain silver ones.
  • Cracker ‘snaps’, if these aren’t included with the blanks, one for each cracker you plan to make.
  • Ribbon, wool, raffia or string, for tying the crackers up, as decorative as you like.
  • Decorations for your crackers, if you want.  I used metallic leaf skeletons, some ribbon and a couple of small jingle-bells, all glued in place, but be creative, anything from the card making section of the craft shop is a good place to start, or how about some decoupage with last year’s Christmas cards?
  • Finally, cracker gifts!  I found some quite cute keyring gadgets of various kinds and also added a nice after-dinner chocolate.  If the gifts are for specific guests, put name-labels on the crackers.
  • Scissors, sticky tape, and clear glue.
  • Make hats and mottos yourself!

Making them couldn’t be easier and is a crafty relaxing way to spend a dark December evening.

First three steps of cracker constructionStart by sticking one end of the cracker snap onto the cracker blank with sticky tape.  Then roll the cracker blank using the tabs (cracker blanks have slightly varying designs, so follow the instructions that come with yours!).  Pinch, twist and tie up one end of the cracker with the string, ribbon, or other thread you’re using – I used silver paper raffia.

Decorating the finished crackersNow fill your cracker with all the bits and pieces, and tie up the other end of the barrel in the same way.  Once you’ve tied this up, stick the second end of the cracker snap into place.  You can decorate the crackers now however you like!

‘But what about my hat and motto’, you may be thinking?  I did see hat-and-motto sets for sale, but they’re awfully expensive considering what you get, a cheap tissue paper crown and a small slip of paper.

Making the hats couldn’t be simpler.  Get some Christmas wrapping paper, I used the end of a roll of white and silver metallic paper which I had knocking around.  First, measure the circumference of your head (unless it’s unusually large or small, in which case perhaps find someone with a more ‘representative’ head to measure – then again, you’ve made them, so perhaps it’s only fair to claim the perk of a cracker hat which fits for once!).  Now cut some pieces of wrapping paper twice as wide as the finished hat you want, and about 1cm longer than the circumference you’ve measured.  Using clear sticky tape, stick the paper into a loop.

Making paper crowns for crackers

Now fold the loop flat (image 1), then in half, then fold each of the halves into three, so that you’re now on the central panel of the film-strip above.  Now fold this in half one last time, then make a single diagonal cut half-way up the paper.  Unfold your two zig-zag topped crowns.  It’s like being back in primary school!  And since they’re neatly folded, tie them that way with ribbon or a small elastic band.

For the mottos, anything goes!  Good (or bad!) jokes, limericks (or haikus?), brain teasers, interesting facts, or even thoughts for the season or personal wishes for your family and friends’ year to come – make them pretty in a word processing package, print them out, cut into strips and fold them up with your paper hats.

Crackers needn’t just be for Christmas – they’re a lovely creative way to package small, special gifts.  An unusual way to wrap a special piece of jewellery, perhaps even a surprise ring?  Or consider using crackers to package wedding favours?

Homemade Gifts – hyacinth bulb and hydrogel beads in a jar

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Lovely, fragrant bulb flowers are one of the first signs of spring.  I especially love hyacinths, with their intoxicating perfume, and particularly growing indoors just a little bit out of season.  They’re like a floral promise that the end of winter *will* be along, just around the corner.

Hyacinth Jars, ready to give

Many of the gifts for my friends and family have been homemade this year – of course I couldn’t write about them before the big day, because that might have ruined the surprise! One of my favourites is a ‘prepared’ hyacinth bulb (heat/cold treated for indoor forcing – this is important, as unprepared ‘garden’ bulbs won’t flower if grown in this way) in a jam jar with hydrogel beads (sometimes called ‘water crystals’).  Hydrogel beads are one of the coolest, weirdest things I’ve come across in a long while.  They start out as a tiny little packet of small clear-plastic looking ballbearing things, but when soaked in water overnight, the contents of the tiny little packet will swell up to fill a whole jam jar.  Better still, the ‘reconstituted’ hydrogel has a refractive index so close to water that they’re essentially invisible if they’re below a fluid level, which, you have to concede, is very cool, in a geeky sort of way.

Once you’ve got over the excitement of the whole thing (I know, right?), how do you make them either into a gift or into a lovely spring treat for your own window ledge?

Hyacinth Jar - 'ingredients'For gifting, simply pack up the pouch of dry hydrogel beads and the prepared hyacinth bulb into a washed and dried recycled jam jar (I took the opportunity to use up some of the pickle jars with too much residual ‘taint’ to use as jam or jelly jars), with an instruction sheet (we’ll get to that).  Do up the lid (but don’t worry if you don’t have one) and top it with a pretty bonnet of fabric or Christmas wrapping paper tied on with ribbon.  What could be sweeter?

No, you can’t have my instruction sheet, write one yourself!  But the process is very straightforward.

  • First, you’ll need to reconstitute your hydrogel beads.  Do this in the jam jar, by emptying the tiny pack of beads into the jar and topping up with warm tap water.  I know it seems very very unlikely that this will work, but indulge me here, and leave them overnight.  The next morning, marvel as you discover the beads filling the jar.  It’s very cool.  If you wanted to be a bit psychedelic, you could add a drop or two of food dye to the water to start with, and this will be taken up by the beads.
  • Drain the beads, leaving them in the jar.  Marvel some more.
  • You want the fattest part of the bulb to sit in the ‘neck’ part of the jar, so work out if you need to remove some beads to get the level right, then place the hyacinth bulb on top of the beads.
  • Top up with water to just below the base of the bulb.
  • Now place the bulb in a cool dark place (a larder cupboard is ideal, an airing cupboard isn’t!).
  • Once there are roots growing and green growth is visible in the top of the bulb, move it into a bright place.  This will take a week or two.
  • Keep the water topped up every so often but avoid having water directly in contact with the base of the bulb as this will encourage mould to grow and may make the bulb rot.  The hydrogel beads will make it a lot more forgiving of marginal drying out than a traditional hyacinth bulb vase.
  • Wait for the hyacinth to flower, which will take another three or four weeks.  You may need to find some way to help keep it propped up, though usually they flower in quite a compact way so you might be lucky!

Hyacinth tankardOf course, you don’t need to restrict yourself to jam jars, all sorts of receptacles will do the trick!

These make a very original, eye catching and fun little gift – I used mine as stocking fillers and as part of hampers.  They cost very little, I sourced the bulbs for just under a pound each (in packs of twelve) and they hydrogel packs come in about £3 for ten.  I have three of the bulbs growing together on hydrogel in a small vase, which I started a couple of weeks ago, and they seem to be going well, with great root growth and a nice bit of green emerging!

Last Minute Christmas – perfect giblet stock

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If you’ve bought a bird for roasting today, there’s a good chance it’s come with a little plastic packet of ‘bits’.  Whatever you do, don’t throw them away!

These bits are the giblets – the offal – usually the neck (in one or two pieces), the heart, the liver, and the gizzard.  The gizzard is thick, muscular structure with two hard abrasive grinding plates that the bird uses to crush up corn and other food items to make them digestible.  Giblet stock is quick, simple, and makes the most wonderful Christmas gravy.

I have a goose this year, but the following applies just as well if you have a chicken or turkey.  Personally, I use the goose heart and liver in one of my stuffings, so only the neck and gizzard are available for the stock.

In addition to the giblets, you need the following:

  • Stock vegetables.  I use one onion (red or white) and a couple of carrots, I don’t like celery so I don’t use it, even though it’s the often-quoted third member of the stock vegetable trinity.
  • A bouquet garni.  This is just a posh culinary term for some herbs. I use some bay leaves, rosemary, thyme and sage, along with some whole pepercorns and a few juniper berries.  Dried is fine.
  • Water.  Glug of white wine (optional).
  • A splash of olive oil.

Prepare your gizzard by cutting away and discarding the hard plates (use a small sharp knife inserted below and parallel to the plates) and chopping the rest of the meat roughly

Put the splash of olive oil into a nice big saucepan, and brown the neck and gizzard meat, and then add the roughly chopped onion and carrots and sautee for a couple of minutes.  Now add about a litre of water (and the splash of white wine if you want) and the bouquet garni, bring to the boil and simmer for about an hour.  Strain, discard the solids, and return the stock to the pot and boil again until reduced in volume by half.  That’s it.  Set aside in the refrigerator until you make your gravy later. You won’t regret it!

Sugar and spice – Christmas baking, seasons and memories

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Christmas cake ingredientsToday I baked our Christmas cake.  I’m not going to insult your intelligence by claiming it’s my recipe – that credit goes to the great Delia Smith – but it is, in some sense, still a ‘family’ recipe.  It’s the cake my mother makes, and the one I made with my grandmother when I was growing up.  I still make it almost exactly like she did.

The smell of citrus zest, calvados, and freshly grated nutmeg can only mean Christmas isn’t far around the corner. Folding the fruit into the cake mixture, heady scents filling the kitchen, is a mix of excitement about the festive season to come, and remembrance of past Christmases, and those we spent them with.  Every year, when I bake my Christmas cake, I think of Grandma – I remember making this cake with her, in her kitchen, all those years ago.

Cake in tinIn my first year at university, some time in November, I remember going into the big, academic bookshop, and digging out a copy of Delia’s Christmas cookbook.  That year, I made my own cake, and I’ve made one every year since then.

Wrapped and ready for the ovenIt still gets double-wrapped in baking parchment before going into the oven, just like my Grandma taught me.  And even though the fashion these days runs more to smooth white icing, it will still get covered in marzipan and then daubed roughly in a royal icing snow-scene and topped with a marzipan poinsettia, just like my Grandma’s used to.  Though of course I’ll probably only get around to it on Christmas Eve.  Grandma I think would have been better organised!

Cake coolingWe forget too often these days what our food says about us, about where we come from, and the people we’re connected to.  Seasonal foods – big obvious ones like Christmas cakes, as well as more modest ones like the first asparagus of summer – connect us with the turning of the seasons as well as back through our memories to previous years and previous feasts.

I hope you enjoy your festive preparations, and create some new, wonderful memories with people you love!