#TipTuesday: Have a wonderful Holiday Season! 🎄 🌟 ☃️ 🕎 🕯️ 🎇 🥂

Kirstie Macfarlane

As the year winds down, many of us will be taking some extra time off to celebrate the season with our friends and family. We hope you all have some holiday gatherings, special traditions, or even far off travels planned to make the most of this time of year.

Here are some tips to make this holiday season a great one:

1. When doing any holiday baking, always make a double batch. You can never have too many cookies or pies, and will always be prepared for unannounced visitors who drop in.
2. On that note, eat the extra cookie. Calories don't count during the holidays.
3. Avoid pants with buttons, stretchy is best 🍗 🍪
4. Holiday naps are key, for all ages.
5. Spice up family gatherings with a secret game of "Family Bingo" with your spouse or siblings. Options like "Uncle XX will comment that the turkey is dry" and "Three wine glasses will be broken" are sure bets.

Tonight I'm due to bake another bath of butter tarts (a family fave). We'd love to hear some of your favorite holiday tips and traditions!

Heather Wendt

Our family used to do the huge meal at Christmas, but once I took over (was voluntold??) all of our family holidays, I started thinking about whether we needed a massive meal at Christmas? It takes the cook out of the family time, and we just had a huge meal a month ago, so I made a new tradition: Christmas Eve is BBQ tri-tip and homemade french fries with a variety of desserts. This is a family favorite, no one misses the huge meal, and I get to be a part of the family fun with minimal clean up!

For Christmas day, we have homemade caramel and cinnamon rolls (I prep them the day before!), with crockpot french dip sliders as you want them for lunch. A lot of grazing options but no official meal that day otherwise. LOVE this format, and everyone is well fed and happy!

Kirstie Macfarlane

https://success.vanillaforums.com/discussion/comment/7414#Comment_7414

I love that @Heather Wendt !

I've also been making overnight cinnamon roles for a few years now (my favorite are gingerbread rolls) and they're a lifesaver!

PiperWilson

@Kirstie Macfarlane - Great tips! Would you share your recipe for butter tarts? Anything with butter and tart in the title just has to be good!

I'll upload my bread recipe in exchange.

Piper's Bread Recipe.pdf

Rav Singh

Since it's summer over Xmas in our side of the world, we spend most of our time outdoors ☀️😊.

We flew back home to New Zealand to visit my parents this year and our tradition is to have a family BBQ lunch followed by either homemade cheesecake or trifle.. basically heeeeaps of food which usually results in an afternoon nap being a necessity 😄

Thank you to the Vanilla team for all your efforts this year and wishing both the HLV team and my fellow Community Managers a very merry Christmas 🎄

Kirstie Macfarlane

@Rav Singh that sounds wonderful, heaps of food and a nap make for a perfect day!

Merry Christmas to you as well 🎄

Kirstie Macfarlane

https://success.vanillaforums.com/discussion/comment/7430#Comment_7430

Sorry for the delay @PiperWilson - here's my butter tart recipe:

Butter Tarts

Pastry:

• 2 and 1/4 cups of flour
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup cold butter (cubed)
• 6+ Tbsp ice water
• 1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

Filling:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• walnuts, pecans, raisins or any other filling you like (chopped)

Instructions:

• Prepare pastry: stir dry ingredients to combine and then cut in cold butter (with a pastry cutter or food processor). Add water and lemon juice and bring together by hand
• Dive into two discs and then chill the dough for at least 2 hours
• After the dough is chilled, you can make your filling:
  • melt butter and sugar in a saucepan until bubbling
  • in another bowl mix the remaining ingredients
  • slowly pour hot mixture into egg mixture, whisking the entire time
• Preheat oven to 400 degrees
• Roll out your dough and cut into circles large enough to fill a muffin tin (make sure the pastry goes above the rim of the tin)
• add your chopped nuts to the bottom of each pastry cup
• add your filling on top of your nuts. I find the easiest way is with a pastry bag that you can pinch at the bottom, less spillage!
• Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce to 375 and bake another 15 minutes

Enjoy!

LiselotteP

Happy holidays to all!

A little late to the party here, but we just celebrated our first Christmas in Finland (with a LOT of snow). All the family came over, and my husband and I had literally cooked for 3 days before the dinner (note to self: never again). I liked the Finnish Christmas food, but I join @Heather Wendt in pondering now, but why? I probably spent another day cleaning it all up…

My top Finnish Christmas foods:

• Christmas ham with mustard.
• Rutabaga casserole.
• Carrot casserole.
• Rosolli - salad from boiled beetroots, carrots, potatoes, usually also apples and pickled cucumber.

I am a big believer in making our own family traditions, and next year I'd like to have less food (with a mix of Finnish and British), and more fun in the snow with the kids!