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Hello, and happy almost-Christmas to my Insiders!
I like to use this mid-December journal each year to give you a few easy and last minute tricks for Christmas. The big ticket items like a turkey or a ham are usually planned and under control by this point, but what I – and I know a lot of you – always want are some quick festive food wins that feel fresh and interesting.
To that end, I have a new puff pastry recipe that’s so simple it’s really not even a recipe. What it is, though, is pretty, festive and fun. It’s also relatively inexpensive to make and will show off the best of your steam oven with loads of flaky pastry layers.
I’m also highlighting a couple of things from past Christmases, and instead of a season flip this issue, I’m going all in with seasonal baking instead, and sharing a handful of my always-favorite Christmas baking recipes.
As with previous years, and for newer Insiders to note, there is no Insiders journal on the 30th of this month. It’s the one issue of the year that we skip, and I will be enjoying a much-needed Christmas and New Year’s break with my boys. I’ll back and ready with more steam oven goodness in mid January, though!
Whatever you’re doing for the holidays, I hope it involves loved ones, plenty of delicious food and some relaxation time (especially for the cooks).
Merry Christmas,
Emily x
Christmas Puff Pastry Wreath with Pesto
This beautiful puff pastry wreath is one of those recipes that looks and tastes way more impressive than the effort it requires. With just three main ingredients—puff pastry, bought pesto, and an egg yolk—you’ll have an attractive, golden, pull-apart appetizer that looks right at home on your holiday table. It’s festive, flaky, and guaranteed to disappear quickly at Christmas parties.
From the Archives:
Want to see my Christmas menu from last year? This year we’ll be at the beach and staying in holiday accommodation, but the menu is remaining largely the same because it worked so well! We’ll be swapping out the salmon for a cold ham (I won’t have my steam ovens and I’m not sure I trust an old holiday home oven to roast my salmon to perfection, ha). And I might switch up the desserts a little, but otherwise it’s a solid menu for a hot weather Christmas meal.
I also love this post from the archives, full of easy food gifts. Many can be done last minute, so there’s still time to give a homemade gift!
The Season’s Best Baking:
These are the things I bake year in, year out at Christmas. They’re the treats that fill cookie boxes we gift to teachers and friends, and the little bites I put out when people come over, or take to parties where I need to bring a plate. Some are steam oven suitable, but mostly these are ‘dry oven’ recipes. I hope you’ll agree they’re good enough that it doesn’t matter the baking method!
Light, crunchy and toasty flavored, this recipe is a great foil to the rich, buttery or chocolate-based things that feature heavily at this time of year. They keep for weeks if sealed well, so make a batch now and eat through the New Year.
My all-time best Gingerbread Cookies
When I say all-time best, I really mean it. I’d estimate my gingerbread cookie numbers run into the tens of thousands at this point, because I’ve been baking enormous quantities of these every Christmas for decades. There are a hundred cookies in containers in my lounge room right now, ready for my 5-year-old’s class to decorate this week!
Lots of you know about this recipe and love it, but if not, here’s a reminder to give it a try! If you’re lucky enough to be flush with lemons at this time of the year, it’s great for gifting and as a quick topping for cakes and meringues (alas, I have no lemons at the moment, my lovely tree is unwell and I am bereft).
These are reliable, delicious and beautiful. Gift them unadorned or top with a simple lemon glaze and Christmas sprinkles.
Double your gifting output by baking up all your sugar cookie scraps from the above recipe, and fold them into a sweet and creamy fudge base! This is a simple fudge that doesn’t need a thermometer or precise temperatures, so it’s straightforward to make.
A Thing I'm Loving
Think of this as an extension of the season’s best baking above – I tried Smitten Kitchen’s brown butter brown sugar shortbread this week, as a late addition to my cookie boxes menu. And it is FANTASTIC. If you love brown butter as much as I do, and you want a cookie recipe that you just blitz and press into a pan (no rolling, cutting or careful shaping), this is going to be your thing. Highly recommended.
Ask Me Anything (AMA)
Here’s your opportunity to ask me anything you like related to combi steam cooking!
I encourage you to submit questions, and do my best to answer as many as possible. I am not able to get to every single question, but I carefully curate ones which are relevant and represent a variety of topics. Sometimes I answer your questions directly via email, and other times, I’ll share your questions and my answers in these journal emails. We all learn from each other, and I often learn new things based on questions from all of you!
If you have an AMA question, please email it to [email protected]. Make sure you include the phrase INSIDERS AMA in the subject line so I can collate and read your submissions.