Whew! We’ve been busy, how about you? I love this season of Advent, even with all the busyness. I’m not even close to being done shopping, apparently the panic hasn’t set in yet, ha ha!

So, I had my voice/piano studio recital on Sunday, and it went really well. I’m always very nervous to accompany. Especially Once Upon a December, ugh, that song was a challenge!  But anyway, Scott told me he thought people really looked forward to the food, and of course, I love planning the menu for it. Unfortunately, I snapped about ZERO pictures for it. One thing I tried this year (since I had a student sing We Wish You a Merry Christmas, including the figgy pudding verse), was figgy pudding! I suspect it’s a pretty updated, modern recipe as it uses cookie crumbs and chocolate chips, but parting with tradition by adding chocolate is always ok in my estimation. Here is the preceding kitchen chaos. I only snapped at my husband once, let it be known. I can usually expect around 40 people at these recitals, so I was a leeetle bit stressed the morning of (sorry Scott!).  And of course the day of the recital was so busy I didn’t snap pictures of the final product! Sigh…oh well.

The entire menu consisted of…

• Pretzel-Peanut Party Mix
• Spritz Cookies
• Festive Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Peanut-Butter Cup Cookies (faaaaaaavorite!!!)
• Crunchy-Muchy Crudites
• Grape Clusters, Apples and Oranges
• Figgy Pudding
• Punch
• Hot Apple Cider

So yes, I was trying to get all this together, plus practice piano on top of it. Whew! 

Here is figgy pudding recipe  I used! Nothing too difficult here, just a little involved, if you’d like to give it a try yourself!

It was good! The chocolate in it was delicious, the brandy gave it a slight heady, British flavor (if British things have a flavor…in my mind, they do!), and the brown butter glaze took it over the top. If I were only serving it to adults, I might have taken a TBS of brandy and brushed it over the top of each one before I added the glaze. There were none left of these at the recital, folks. How Christmassy is figgy pudding? I urge you to give it a try! I hope you’re having a beautiful Advent/Christmas season!

Your servant,

 

Xx