A Christmas feast with friends

Since moving about 6 hours away from our families almost 9 years ago, we’ve tried to establish some new traditions to show our new friends how much they mean to us. It’s hard to raise small children without family nearby to lean on. After many very years feeling quite isolated, we’ve found great friends in our community such that I no longer yearn to move “back home.” Since we travel for the major holidays, we’ve started trying to host a “Friendsgiving” some time around Thanksgiving. This Fall, being the hot mess of unexpected losses that it was, didn’t make that feasible. By December, I could see the girls were missing our new tradition and they asked to host a Christmas party instead.

We’ve been so blessed by our friends during this challenging time, the very least we could do was give them a night of food and friends to show our appreciation. And when it comes to food and friends, I tend to go a bit overboard! I had a big ham, savory mashed sweet potatoes, shaved brussel sprouts with cranberries and pecans, and baked mac and cheese. But the really fun spread was the snack and dessert table! Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like I got a photo of the whole table, just bits and pieces of it.

I set the girls up with the recipe and ingredients and together my 8 and 5 year old made the cranberry brie bites (I just did the cutting to get even pieces). I had some tortilla chips with salsa and to dress it up a bit I combined some cream cheese and sour cream with taco seasoning and used a simple, plastic sandwich bag to pipe it into tree shapes on a long serving dish.

Friends brought cookies and pumpkin dip with Nilla wafers, I was sure to leave a few empty serving plates on my buffet cabinet so we could add goodies to the spread as friends brought goodies to share. A few larger snacks like a beautiful charcuterie tray found it’s home on the dinner table.

Considering that I am now working during the day, I needed more simple desserts that I could make the night before. I opted for a yule log because CHRISTMAS, and CHOCOLATE. And finally, a cherry trifle because I don’t think I’ve used my trifle bowl since we moved here and it was time to change that!

This was my first attempt at any type of rolled cake and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. The cake itself is a chocolate genoise which I have actually made a few times before. The filling is just a sweetened whipped cream, the recipe I used suggesting adding 2 teaspoons of gelatin to help stabilize it and I did that. If I were doing it again, I would only use one teaspoon of gelatin. I did not use their recipe for frosting and decorating. I wanted REALLY rich chocolate flavor so I opted for a whipped chocolate ganache instead of chocolate frosting. I piped the whipped ganache using a large open star tip and then dusted with a little powdered sugar “snow.”

I couldn’t find a recipe for the cherry trifle I had pictured in my head, so I just threw my own ideas together. There are a few things I will do differently next time, but overall it came together beautifully! I will give the recipe it’s own post and link back. I used an old recipe from one of my mom’s books for the cake with just a bit of almond extract added, cut to the size of my trifle bowl, jarred sour cherries, boiled the juice down to a syrup consistency, made a whipped cream cheese and cream filling, and layered it all up. The most difficult part was opening the jars of cherries!

One of my friends commented that food was my love language, and it is certainly true. Food and crafting in general is how I show love and appreciation. I’m so thankful for the community I have found to share it with!