u/Druyv

I've been wanting to try making something like this for a little while now, so this theme was perfect! The green ones are sour apple flavoured and the orange ones are peach iced tea.

My initial attempt at this failed miserably (final picture). It may look fine, but they were flavourless and gritty and all the creatine (which doesn't dissolve well) sank to the bottom of the mold/top of the Lego brick. It was like eating sand in jell-o. Pretty awful!

So for my next attempt(s) I decided to change course a little. First, I used apple juice as the base instead of just plain water. The protein powder I used was already sour apple flavour (clear whey protein), but it just wasn't strong enough. Similarly I used actual peach iced tea for the peach iced tea one (which uses peach iced tea flavour clear whey). Secondly I kept stirring the gelatin mix for much longer after adding the creatine so that the mixture had already started to thicken considerably before pouring in the mold. This worked a treat, because the creatine stayed better suspended in the gelatin.

The clear whey does tend to foam when stirred, so as you can see there is a discolored gelatinized foam on the bottom of the gummies, which is strange but not unpleasant!

I don't think I'll make these again. Portions are hard to measure and the process is kind of messy.

After seeing a reel on Instagram for these curd bars I found this recipe and decided that would be my dish for this theme!

I changed a few things; firstly I opted for strawberries instead of blueberries, because I could find nicer ones, and secondly I upped the ratio of poppy seeds in the base shortbread by a lot. The idea was to turn it black, but I couldn't quite grind my poppy seeds fine enough to use as a flour substitute.

These were so delicious! I ate way too much of it before I decided I should bring it into work and feed to my colleagues, who happily gobbled up what was left.

Nobody wanted this theme, so I decided to go off topic and make a dish with each letter from the word!

A is for Aged cheese. There is parmigiano on the bottom of the leeks and aged goat's cheese in the sauce.

L is for leeks, which I roasted with a foil lid for 45 minutes at 220C, and then finished at 200C for half an hour without the foil. Last 5 minutes I added the cheese.

P is for potatoes, which I cut into rounds and then used this recipe to make fondant potatoes.

I is for infused, which is what I did for the sauce. I melted 50gr of butter and added a handful of sage to the butter. Once it smells delicious, remove the sage and replace with minced garlic. I let my garlic get very brown and then added about 1/2 cup of cream. Once that got hot I crumbled in about 120gr of goat's cheese.

N is for nuts. Walnuts. I nearly forgot them, but they are hidden under the sauce. First I got them nice and toasty and chopped though.

E is for the poached egg on top, using Kenji's foolproof method.

I am fully aware that the dish this ended up being fits very nicely as an Alpine dish and uh.. I'm not sure how I feel about that to be honest.. I also drizzled a little bit of lemon juice over the entire thing to brighten it up a little. This was delicious! The potatoes with the sauce would make a killer side for Christmas!