Christmas Cake

My tried and tested Christmas cake recipe.
Chocolate fruitcake | BBC Good Food

This is a great alternative to a traditional rich, fruit celebration cake I am used too, but works for us.  As with any recipe I use , I have to substitute a little if I can't find the exact ingredients.
I used extra raisins, dried apricots and dried strawberries instead of currants.  Currants can be found here, but not so common.  I never use them anyway because I don't like finding stray seeds in cakes. Whilst in UK, you have a choice in quality/brand of dried fruit you buy - here, you don't.  So, I wont compromise on quality.  After all, this isn't a cheap cake to make!  I couldn't find dried cherries of any description, so used dates.  My dark chocolate was 70%. and lastly my alcohol of choice is Cherry Brandy:)

I made my cake a week ago, and today it has had its first feed.  The cake will be feed 2-3 times more before been decorated nearer to Christmas.

50 days to go...

....until Out of a Turn by Tiffany A. Snow is published (17th December).  This will be the fourth book in The Kathleen Turner series!

Can't wait!

Belfast.

We were off travelling again last week...this time to Belfast. As with our other trips, Oskar and I were accompanying Nils on a business trip. He works and Oskar and I have a little holiday;) Like most of our other trips, we have to be a bit creative in getting to our final destination. This time we left from Kristiansand (KRS) to Dublin (DUB) via Oslo (OSL) then train to Belfast!

Whilst waiting at Connolly Street Station in Dublin, Nils very kindly bought me a little drink.....yum!

A view from the Dome on Victoria Square Belfast. It was a beautiful, warm, Autumn day!

We spent our first morning with Nils before he headed off to his first meeting. It was a chance to suss out where places were that we wanted to visit. On this particular day, we sought out the Odeon cinema. For Oskar, it is a novelty to see films at the cinema in English and luckily there were a couple showing whilst we were in Belfast. On this day we spent a couple of boring hours seeing Justin and the Knights of Valour! Unfortunately, neither of us were impressed by the film....poor Oskar wasn't keen on the popcorn either!

The Big Fish is a ceramic mosaic.

Despite forecasting nasty weather, we took our chance by walking to the Titanic Centre. It was blowing a gale, but it was quite refreshing. We were lucky in that we didn't get wet through until making our way back to our hotel. This was after visiting the Centre and also taking in another film at the Odyssey. This time it was Planes! I found this slightly less boring that the previous film, but Oskar thoroughly enjoyed it!

The Titanic Centre.

Our last full day was devoted to shopping! And we were able to fill the extra bag we brought "just in case"!