Gingerbread Birdhouse

Merry Christmas, dear readers!  We present to you our own gingerbread birdhouse, completed just in time for Christmas day.  The design was inspired by a wee birdie, a lovely little lovebird, who recently adopted us.  In a very short time he has totally charmed all of us with his lively personality and cheeky attitude.   Yeah, he's the boss, pretty much.

The other point of our inspiration was, quite naturally, the cuckoo clock!

Five Spice Spritz Cookies

Christmas is just around the corner, so fast, amirite?!  And we're buzzing around, making secret gift plans, decorating the house and, of course, making our Christmas cookies.  

This year we made cookie press cookies, also known as spritz cookies.  A couple years ago I tried making these cookie press cookies for the 1st time and it was a big ol mess: cookie dough not sticking, not pressing out right, just about everything going wrong... 🥹  So I gave up.

I thought to try it again.  But this time we added our own twist to these Christmas Spritz Cookies, a touch of five spice powder to add an exotic flavor to these yummilicious crisp buttery cookies.  We also worked out how to successfully get those darn cookies out and onto the cookie sheet!

Homemade Sui Mai Wrapper 自製燒賣皮

As a fitting start to our Dim Sum exploration I thought to start with the quintessential Siu Mai dim sum 燒賣點心, one of the most favorite and famous of all the dim sums.  However I quickly ran into a problem- it was hard to find and purchase the distinctive yellow sui mai wrapper that form such an integral part of the iconic look of the Siu Mai dim sum dumpling.

So I decided to make my own.  It’s pretty straight forward to make but does require some time, mostly for the cutting up of the individual wrappers.  But man, oh man, was I able to make really nicely thin wrappers which is a must for the really good little dim sum dumpling - no one wants a mouthful of wrapper rather than a mouthful of yummilicious savory filling!