Chopsticks Only: Qing Dao Merrily on High 青岛圣诞喜洋洋

Well, if anyone out there is dying to know how I spent December 2012 gearing up for the festive season in a foreign land, now you can find out! Hello? Is anybody there? Didn’t think so. Meh.

Ooh-la-la. The Shangri-la's fancy pants tree.

So, step one for holiday hype: decorations. Obviously, I lack the resources of the Shangri-la, and could only marvel in awe and jealousy at their huge (and damn classy for China) Christmas tree. With the search and destroy machine called Heimdall roaming my apartment, a tree was out of the question. So, I contented myself with a baubles from all the door handles and hanging decoration on my front door.

I wish you all understood how happy dangly things make me.

This is the origami advent calendar I made for our classroom. Instead of sweets, I used Christmas jokes, because you never know what sneaky sweet-toothed thief could be roaming the foreign students department (namely Will). The best jokes I could find were; ‘How does King Wenceslas like his pizza?’, ‘Deep-pan, crisp and even’, and, ‘What illness do you get from eating Christmas decorations?’, ‘tinselitus’. Sorry everybody, I'll stop now :(

What do you call an elf who has just won the lottery? Welfy

Then, a week or so before Christmas, it snowed! Festive atmosphere: tick. I literally went into Christmas hyperdrive and walked around singing 'White Christmas' to myself. Here's some photos of Heimdall in the snow.

So, what's missing? Cake. Lots of Cake. So I made a Tiramisu, which must have ended up costing £10 a portion, because all the ingredients had to be imported. Because I lack an oven, make a tiramisu, they said, it will be easy, they said. I kept my flatmate up until 3am with my whisking. I'm a terrible person. But I'm a terrible person who can make a delicious tiramisu, remember that.

Sorry, it ended up looking like a bowl of soil.

Ingredients:
6 egg yolks
230g white sugar
300g marscapone cheese
500ml whipping cream
80ml coffee flavoured liqueur (or more...)
Ladyfingers
5g cocoa powder for dusting
30g chocolate

1. Combine egg yolks and sugar over boiling water on low heat, cook for 10mins stirring constantly. Remove from heat and whisk until thick and lemon coloured.

2. Add marscapone to whipped yolks. Beat until combined. In separate bowl, whip cream to stiff peaks, then fold into yolk mixture.

3. Line large bowl with ladyfingers, then douse with coffee liqueur. Spoon half of the cream filling over the ladyfingers, then repeat ladyfingers, coffee liqueur and filling layers. Use a vegetable peeler on the chocolate to make chocolate curls. Garnish Tiramisu with cocoa powder and chocolate curls.

4. Refrigerate for several hours, then consume. Nom nom.