Weekend Cooking: Christmas in July (in August)

I don't know if Christmas in July is a worldwide thing or if it is just something that we in the Southern Hemisphere like to partake in, or maybe even just here in Australia. Whichever it is, it is an event that seems to be gaining more and more popularity here.

What having a Christmas in July does is enables us to have some form of Christmas dinner when the weather is cold rather than slaving in a hot kitchen in the middle of summer when it is really Christmas. Having said that, in our family we do tend to do the full on traditional Christmas dinner regardless of the heat, so maybe it is just an excuse to bring people together for good food and company.


 My sister hosts a Christmas in July every second year and when she does, it is the full on traditional Christmas dinner, and there is even a non traditional form of gift giving, usually by playing Bad Santa (where you open gifts one by one and other people can steal the gift that you received if they want).

This year, we went to a work friend's apartment and everyone bought something to share. She lives right on the beach so some people were out on the balcony looking out at the bay (brrrr!!). The food varied from a really delicious chicken dish, to potatoes cooked in goose fat, cauliflower broccoli cheese and more, with panna cotta for dessert.

The date had to be changed to early August for a few reasons, so in the end we were celebrating Christmas in July (in August)

My contributions were some marbled fondant sugar cookies. This is a Bake it Box that I have had sitting in my cupboard for a while now. I knew that I wanted these to be my first bake in my new oven. The kit included a little stamp kit so you can put whatever words you like in the icing. My plan was to have some cookies that said Christmas and the rest would say August? but in the end I just had them all saying Christmas because it was getting late on Friday night.

I did, however, have the words 1st Bake and Reno in a couple in celebration of the fact that the kitchen renovation is nearly done! So close. I am planning to post about it when the last finishing touches are done. I did have a few issues getting the letters around the right way at first but I'm very pleased with how they turned out.

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