It's been so long!

How long has it been? .....1....2....3...4...5! Weeks!

Well, first of all my camera ran out of battery while I was at home for Christmas, and I did not have the charger with me :( and also...I've just bravely finished the last of my five January exams. Wahooo!

So, one thing you missed over the Christmas period was my Dad's amazing Coulibiac- the centerpiece to my family's Christmas feast!

And here is the beautiful thing...

 Inside this beast are layer upon layer of pancakes, mushrooms in a white wine cream, smoked fish, egg and rice- all wrapped up in a brioche pastry. It is the epitome of flavour accompanied by beautifully crisp roast potatoes, garlicky brussle sprouts, sweet roast parsnips, and all the rest.

There hasn't been a Christmas I remember when we haven't had a coulibiac, so it is throughly a part of family tradition now. The recipe my Dad uses is an adaptation of Anton Mosimann's own coulibiac recipe. Unfortunately i'm not going to provide you with the recipe- that remains my family secret ;)
However, feel free to try it out- it's a beautiful thing. :)


Another thing I recently made, which is quite different, is a pie-type-sweet-thing for my friend Hannah's birthday. It was taken from the recipe by Cooking On The Weekend (periwinkles-and-peanut-butter-smores-meringue-pie). Her recipe was inspired by American 'smores'- something I've never experienced, but from the look of this pie, I imagine are rather delicious.

The task I had for my friend's birthday food was something peanut butter related, as one of the first things I learnt about her was how much she loves peanut butter. As you can imagine, there are a fair few peanut butter recipes on the internet, but I settled on this one because it looked different and extravagant.

When I had finished the entire thing I came across a problem... I couldn't get it out of the tin. So the finished product, presented to Hannah, remained half in- half out:

However, she and her sister still seemed to enjoy it, and it did start shifting once some forks were plunged in to it, so I wouldn't call it a bad ending at all! :D