Post Christmas cooking

Yum, Christmas food is soooo good, especially those leftovers that seem to last until New Years. I still have a slab of Christmas cake and a slab of fudge in the freezer that I have managed not to eat, but I am saving these for my big son who was overseas for Christmas this year. Other than that, all the Christmas food is gone. I know this is a good thing. I have started exercising more seriously again this week, and I need to get back to eating healthy.
I just find it really hard to go ‘cold turkey’ on the sweet food after Christmas. I am already craving just one more fruit mince tart lol. So, today I decided to make some Dried fruit truffles. They are a bit healthier than the fudge and fruit mince tarts. I stared with a recipe but didn’t have half the ingredients, so a new recipe was born! Here it is.

Sharee’s Post Christmas Fruit Truffles

1 cup seeded chopped dates
1 cup raisins
1 cup walnuts pieces
3 heaped tablespoons light cream cheese
3 tablespoons liqueur (I used Amaretto because I had some left over from Christmas but you could use any liqueur
2 teaspoons mixed spice
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

I put all of these ingredients in a bowl and processed them together using my stick blender but you could use a food processor if you have one. Stop processing as soon as the cream cheese and fruit is all smooshed together. It’s good if it still has a few bigger bits in it.
My mix was still pretty sticky, so I crushed up all the left over sweet biscuits I could find in the house. This was about

1/2 packet of sweet biscuits, crushed

Stir these into the fruit mix.
Use your hands to roll into balls with about 1 teaspoon of mix in each ball (this gets pretty messy as the mixture is still quite sticky).
Roll balls in

Almond meal (I had some Almond Meal left over from Christmas, but if you don’t have any you could use coconut or cocoa)

Store truffles in a container in the freezer and eat straight from the freezer when you need a post Christmas sugar hit.
Enjoy!

Speaking of Almond meal, I must show you a photo of the macaroons that my daughter made for Christmas.

She makes the best macaroons ever. We weren’t sure how they would go in Queensland’s more humid weather, but I think they turned out even better.
She learned how to make them from this great little book.

These ones were salted caramel flavour – yum. To do this she made vanilla flavoured macaroons onto which she sprinkled a little bit of rock salt. Then after they had cooled she filled them with Nestle ‘Top’n’fill’ caramel which worked great.

Here is another healthy treat that we have been enjoying today.

Did you know about this? I didn’t, but my Mother in Law introduced us to Watermelon with ginger. You just chop up some watermelon into a bowl, sprinkle it with about 1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger and wait 5 minutes for the ginger to soak in before eating. It is really yummy – you should try it. I bought a whole watermelon this week so I think I will make some watermelon sorbet tomorrow.
I hope you are eating yummy things too.
All the best,
Sharee