Christmas Eve Picnic

"Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas!", is what the Santa Clause music doll sings at my parents' house. We spent Christmas day with my family this year, away from home, but I really wanted to do something special for our small family of five to exchange our personal gifts. Although not traditional, we decided to have a picnic on Christmas Eve day with only a few snacks. I also thought a picnic would be fun for our toddler, to enjoy the snacks outside on the grass - however, after a snack or two he got bored and my husband and I decided to call it a day and enjoy the rest of the snacks inside the house and start with the gift exchanging.

To make the picnic a bit more fun for the grown ups, I made a green Christmassy cocktail, which turned out to be very cool and refreshing on the hot summer's day. The only way I could think of making the drink green (without using food colouring) was by using peppermint liqueur. I came across this cocktail called Amaretto Stinger, which calls for one part white mint liqueur and two parts Amaretto liqueur. My final mix to get the Christmassy green cocktail (with the shiny red and white paper straw) was one shot peppermint liqueur, two shots Amaretto liqueur, a handful of ice ice, topped with Sprite. The Amaretto liqueur definitely breaks the strong peppermint flavour - perfect for a hot summer's day.

For the picnic snacks, I made some and bought some. The savoury snacks comprised fresh cherry tomatoes, grilled smoked viennas, chicken as well as cheese griller cocktail sausages which I quickly grilled and served with a burger mayo dip, cheesy chicken nuggets, sandwiches with salami, cheese and mayo and mini egg bites - with crispy bacon bits and cheese. These were really easy to make and the recipe is flexible by adding anything to the egg that you desire.

The sweet snacks were toasted coconut covered marshmallows, which is one of my favourite treats, as well as deliciously moist and easy to make pumpkin cupcakes - details below. 

Initially I wanted to make mini pumpkin pies but decided it will be too much effort with the little ones. I then came across a pumpkin cake recipe (who would've thought that something like this existed) and decided to rather make mini pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. These cakes were deliciously fluffy and easy to make, and made me think of carrot cake (also a favourite of mine) with the gingery taste. The recipe calls for canned pumpkin puree, but I roasted and pureed my own pumpkin. To combine the cake mixture was easy and straight forward, and baked quite quickly in the mini cupcake pans. After cooled down, I added the cream cheese frosting, sprinkled with red and green edible glitter for that Christmassy look and finished off with broken up pecan nuts.