It’s time to reflect on lessons learned with your money management through the last Christmas period and to take steps to be better prepared for next Christmas.

If you overspent on your credit card, then put it in the freezer and pay off the balance owing as quickly as you can. That means paying more than just the minimum payment each month.

Buying gifts throughout the year when you spot a good bargain helps to spread your spending as well as saving you money.

Around this time of year Christmas hamper companies start their advertising. If you do the sums, you will usually find it is much cheaper to save money in a bank account and buy your own hamper rather than give money each week to a hamper company.

Don’t be fooled either by offers from furniture and white ware retailers to buy goods now with no payments for the next year or so. It’s very tempting when your credit card is maxed out to take up offers to have what you want now and pay later, but you will soon find, once the no payment period has passed, that you have created a huge financial burden for yourself. If you can’t afford the repayments now, then you are probably not going to be able to afford them next year either.

Set yourself some clear goals for what you want to achieve with your money by next Christmas. Make your goals realistic and start taking small steps towards achieving them on your next payday.

It seems that as we get older, Christmases seem to come around more and more quickly. Don’t let next Christmas catch you by surprise.

There are lots of things you can make that will give a lot of pleasure. These ideas might take a bit of your precious time but won’t cost much in dollars The time spent will be really appreciated by the person on the receiving end.

Some of the ideas here don’t actually take long to make either and you can involve other household members, including children and flatmates.

Truffles

See our chocolate truffles recipe.  This is a lot of fun when you have some ‘help’ with rolling the mixture into small balls.

If you’re feeling a bit stressed, then this is an ideal stress buster – take some deep breaths first and accept that it will be messy fun and there’ll be a bit of cleaning up afterwards.

After the mess comes the fun of wrapping these little beauties in festive style.

1. Use a festive small paper plate or cover a plain paper plate with a festive paper napkin.
2. Arrange the truffles on the plate, preferably in one layer.
3. Place the plate on a large sheet of coloured cellophane or festive wrapping paper.
4. Cut the paper ina large circle so that you can pull it up around the plate, draw it in and tie it with red, green gold or silver ribbons at the top.

1. Make or buy small cardboard boxes that will hold 6 -12 truffles.  if the boxes are plain white or brown you can decorate them yourself with stickers or paint.
2. This can be a job for the youngest members of the household, especially when the gift is for a grandparent , aunt or uncle.

Mini Christmas cakes

When you make or buy a large Christmas cake, this is an easy way to make  mini Christmas cakes that will be just right for people living alone.

Christmas cake

If you know someone who loves a good fruit cake but doesn’t have time to make one, try one of our Christmas cake recipes and give them a whole cake, iced and decorated or left plain depending on what you know of their preference.

This is also a useful gift to take with you when you are visiting others over the holiday period.

You can try our very easy Christmas cake or the gluten free fruit cake.

This fruit cake tastes just like a Christmas cake and you can serve it to anyone – whether they need to be gluten free or not.  I made it with pre-packed gluten-free flour (a mixture of ground tapioca, potato and rice). 

You can make your own mix with these or other gluten-free cereals.  I also like to add ground almonds.

I don’t recommend chickpea flour for this cake due to its strong flavour.  Also I’d avoid ordinary baking powder as it may have traces of gluten.

The method for making this cake basically involves only one lot of mixing.  How easy is that!

Ingredients

1 kg dried fruit mix
2 cups orange juice
1 ½ cups gluten-free flour (or you can mix your own – ¾  cup  rice flour, ½  cup  potato  flour)
½ cup ground almonds
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons mixed spice
1 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cream of tartar

Method

1. Empty the packet of fruit mix into a large mixing bowl
2. Pour over the orange juice and leave to soak overnight or for at least 3 hours. This allows the juice to soak into and soften the fruit
3. Prepare a 22cm square or round cake tin. Grease the base and sides and line with the whole tin with cake baking or greaseproof paper
4. Cut the paper to fit the base and then cut strips to line the sides of the tin. Brush the paper with a greased pastry brush or a knife that has been dipped in cooking oil.  Put prepared tin to one side
5. When you’re ready to mix the cake heat the oven to 170° C
6. Measure the dry ingredients and sift them into the bowl with the fruit and juice
7. Stir gently with a wooden spoon until the dry ingredients are mixed evenly through the fruit.
8. Spoon into the prepared baking tin and spread the mixture evenly.
9. Bake at 170° C for 1 ½  hours. Check after about 70 minutes that the top isn’t burning.  If the fruit is starting to look dark brown or even black, cover the top of the cake with a double sheet of greaseproof or baking paper
10. When cooked, leave the cake to cool in the tin before turning it out.

This makes a smallish cake that is about 5 cm high. 

Notes:

1. You can eat it as is or ice it.  Traditional Christmas cake icing consists of an almond paste covered with a smooth white icing mixture.  Check out how to do it here.
2. If you like almonds, you can decorate your cake before you cook it by placing almonds over the top of your cake.  Then you have an attractive cake that doesn’t need to be iced.
3. You can add more ground almonds if you want to.  Just reduce the amount of the flours by the same volume.

Think fiddly?  Not this way.

Make or buy a 20cm or 24 cm square Christmas cake and cut it into smaller squares.  A good size is  8-10 cms each.

Ice the small squares using almond paste and soft white icing (See http://www.askmumnow.com/in-the-kitchen/recipes/in-betweens/icing-for-fruit-or-christmas-cake/)

If the recipient doesn’t like icing, leave the cake plain.

Buy a decoration that will fit on the top.

Cover with cling wrap then wrap in red cellophane paper  or silver foil wrapping paper and tie with green, red or silver ribbons.

Ingredients

1 kg dried fruit mix
2 cups orange juice
2 cups self-raising flour
2 teaspoons mixed spice

Method

1. Empty the packet of fruit mix into a large mixing bowl
2. Pour over the orange juice and leave to soak overnight or for at least 3 hours. This allows the juice to soak into and soften the fruit
3. Prepare a 22cm square or round cake tin. Grease the base and sides and line with the whole tin with cake baking or greaseproof paper
4. Cut the paper to fit the base and then cut strips to line the sides of the tin. Brush the paper with a greased pastry brush or a knife that has been dipped in cooking oil.  Put prepared tin to one side until you are ready to mix the cake
5. Heat the oven to 170° C
6. Measure the flour and sift it into the bowl with the fruit and juice
7. Stir gently with a wooden spoon until the flour is mixed evenly through the fruit.
8. Spoon into the prepared baking tin and spread the mixture evenly. Make a slight hollow in the centre so that when the cake rises, it doesn’t peak and crack in the middle
9. Bake at 170° C for 2 hours. Check after 90 minutes that the top isn’t burning.  If the fruit is starting to look dark brown or even black, cover the top of the cake with a double sheet of greaseproof or baking paper
10. When cooked, leave the cake to cool in the tin before turning it out.

This makes a smallish cake that is about 5 cm high. 

You can eat it as is or ice it.  Traditional Christmas cake icing consists of an almond paste covered with a smooth white icing mixture.  Check out how to do it here.

If you like almonds, you can decorate your cake by placing almonds over the top of your cake before you cook it.  Then you have an attractive cake that doesn’t need to be iced.

Wedding cake

If you are planning to make your own wedding cake, you could use this recipe.  I suggest you double all the ingredients for a bigger cake in a 24 cm round tin.  You would need to bake the cake for 3 hours and check in the last hour of cooking so it doesn’t burn on the top.

You can get it professionally decorated or simply buy some ready-made decorations to place on top.