Love Actually

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 425. Mix grated beet/beat with sausage, onion, and seasonings.

Sprinkle a cutting board with flour, and lay out your puff pastry. Spread mustard over pastry, with roughly a one inch boarder on all sides untouched. Spread sausage mixture over mustard in a line, and brush the borders of the pastry with egg wash-- see below.

Wrap your roll and rest with seal at the bottom. Brush with more egg wash and score lightly with a sharp knife. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and cut into four equal pieces (you can trip the very ends first to ensure you don't have excee dough). Place on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet.

Bake for 25 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool at least 10 minutes before serving, tho you can serve at room temperature.

Ah fuck, wank, bugger, shitting arse head and hole these are good.

Instructions

Assemble marinade ingredients!

Reserve a tbsp of the sauce in a separate container, and marinade the chicken in the remainder ro at least 3hrs (up to overnight).

Preheat the oven to 425. Place chicken on a wired rack over an aluminum foil covered cookie sheet and bake for 35-40 minutes until thickest part of the breast reads 150. You can ignore all sources that say 165 should be a cooked chicken's internal temp-- LIES. But you should use a meat thermometer just in cases. Remove from the oven and allow to come to room temperature.

Mix the remaining tbsp of piri pir sauce with mayo and gather the rest of your sandwich fixins:

Assemble and enjoy whilst dreaming of Colin Firth learning a new language just for you.

Instructions

First, collect your little lobster tails. I prefer fresh, since store bought cooked lobster tends to be chewy.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, and add your lobster tails and 3 quarters of lemon. Your water will take a minute to come back to a rolling boil-- once it does, cook for 3 minutes. Remove the lobster tails from the water and immediately place under cold running water until no longer hot.

Using a very sharp pair of scissors, cut through your lobster tails lengthwise and extricate the delicious yummy lobster meat.

Mix mayo, juice from remaining quarter of lemon, celery, and shallot-- add in lobster, and flavor with salt and pepper to taste. Thinly slice cucumber on a bias, and get to assembling.

Cut at a diagonal-- then consume while listening to Joni Mitchell and thinking about why men are garbage.

Instructions

Cut your puff pastry squares, and mix egg, cream, cheese, salt, and hot sauce.

Place squares in a cupcake tin and brush lightly with egg wash. Fill with egg mix. Bake at 425 for 10 minutes to start-- while you wait, cook bacon bits in a saute pan until crisped. Drain, and sprinkle over your tartlets for the final 5 minutes of cooking. Remove from the oven when the puff pastry is a rich golden brown. Allow to cool slightly before nom nom noming.

YA DARLING.

Instructions

Microwave dark chocolate in bursts of 30 seconds until melted (about a minute and a half all in). Set aside to cool slightly.

Pulse the walnuts in a food processor until very finely chopped. Next, cream the butter and sugar with a hand mixer, a couple of minutes. Add the melted chocolate, nuts, brandy, and vanilla and mix until thoroughly combined. The mixture will be soft, so you'll want to refrigerate it for 10 or so minutes until slightly more firm.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and divide the chocolate mixture into two balls-- press slightly at the bottom of each so that they will sit flatly. Freeze for another 10 minutes so that your balls will again... firm up? lol.

Microwave white melting chocolate in bursts of 30 seconds, just as you did with the dark chocolate. Dunk chilled chocolate balls into white chocolate until completely coated, working VERY quickly (the butter in the balls will melt). Set back onto the parchment paper and refreeze, before coating once more. Refrigerate for at least 15 to 20 minutes or longer.

Add a drop or two of red food coloring to the remaining white chocolate until you get a light pink color. Using a piping tip, add a slight amount of pink chocolate to the top of each ball. And there you have it-- a super sweet yet very sexually explicit treat.

Instructions

Start with the dulce de leche-- preheat oven to 425°F, and pour sweetened condensed milk into a small glass baking dish. Cover with aluminum foil, and place dish in a larger baking dish. Pour hot water into the larger dish until it reaches halfway up the side of the smaller dish.

Transfer to oven and cook until condensed milk has become deep golden brown, about 1 hour. Remove from oven and whisk dulce de leche while still hot. Set aside, and reduce oven temp to 350.

In a small bowl, add the graham cracker crumbs, first portion of butter, and first portion of sugar. Stir to combine. Divide the graham cracker mixture into two tart molds (or cupcake tins if that's what you got), firmly pressing with your fingers.

Bake for 5 to 10 minutes in a 350-degree oven or place in the freezer to set up for 10 minutes.

In the meantime, saute your bananas in remaining butter, sugar, sea salt and cinnamon until caramelized golden brown.

Cue the Bay City Rollers, and assemble-- add a heaping tbsp of dulce de leche to each crust, top with slices of banana, followed by whipped cream, another banana slice, and a dusting of additional cinnamon.

Instructions

Heat chocolate, cream and vanilla in a glass bowl in bursts of 30 seconds, until melted and shiny. This is your truffle base. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes to set.

Roll into two truffle balls, and gradually shape into hearts.

Dust with gold until fully coated-- gouge a small hole in the bottom right of the "pendant" and fill with raspberry jam/"gems".

Chill until ready to eat, at which point you should place into a box, wrap with gold ribbon. This box will then go into a cellophane bag-- don't worry, it will be ready in the flashiest of flashes-- which you should then fill with rose petals, followed by a flourish of dried lavendar. I think we can stop there-- I lack a larger Christmas box.

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cream the vanilla, butter and sugar with a hand mixer. Sift in the flour and salt, and continue to miix on low speed until the dough starts to come together. Dump onto a surface dusted with more flour and shape into a flat disk.

Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

Roll the dough 1/4-inch thick and, using a cookie cutter or glass, cut four circles out of the dough. In the center of two of the rounds cut out two hearts.

At this point, you'll have extra dough, so why not make a bunch of baby heart cookies? Because unlike Natalie, my thighs actually ARE the size of big tree trunks.

Bake on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet for 20 to 25 minutes, until the edges begin to turn golden brown. Allow to cool to room temperature.

Melt the chocolate in a glass bowl (at this point in the blog post, you should be well versed). Spread onto the non-stenciled cookies, and allow to cool before covering with a layer of jelly.

Feel free to do the same with your baby hearts if you have extra! They're a delightful accompaniment to a nice cuppa tea and a smooch with Hugh Grant.

Instructions

If you don't know how to make a cup of tea, I don't know what you're doing reading this blog.