Yule Log
At the time of first writing this, Boxing Day 2025, since living at Kuokkatie, I will have presided over eight Christmases (16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25), the latter half of which I would say I was totally in charge of.
Yet, for all of those years, I find myself asking the same questions each year… “How long do I cook the turkey?, “How long do I defrost the turkey?” and so on…
So I thought it would be a nice idea to keep for myself a little log of these events going forward. That way in following years, I can easily answer those questions!
Previous years: 2025
2025
🦃 Turkey
I bought the turkey from Prisma, it was 5.5kg (10.19e/kg, ~56e).
I got the turkey out of the freezer and put it in the fridge to defrost 3 days before Christmas at 0800 in the morning. There was a lump of ice in the cavity, but the bird itself was well defrosted.
Based on the advice of Jamie Oliver, we cooked the turkey at 170C (fan) for 2hrs20mins (well, Jamie suggests 180C, I suggested 160C fan, mum said we should split the difference and go 170C fan), at which point the thermometer was at 80, so cooked, followed by another 20mins at 150C (fan).
The turkey was rested for about 1.5hrs, and it was nice and juicy and warm when we came to eat it.
🎂 Chrsitmas Cake
Used this gluten free recipe from Coeliac.org, which I have in RecipeKeeper. I used my 24cm wide tin, which gives quite a shallow cake, only 5cm, but it came out nice. I used two packs of 250g marzipan and icing and that was enough.
🎅🏻 Guests
Mum, Anne, Bebbe and Miro.
🎁 Others
Mincemeat: Used butter and grated apple as substitute for suet, mum found a shop where I could try buying it next year. They turned out really nice. Next year, if using apple, do shorter movements on the grater so you don’t get such long pieces; it gives a slightly unpleasant texture.
Crackers: Anki and Emma made the crackers, I used Gemini to suggest 30 cracker jokes and purchased the paper crowns from Amazon. The crackers were great and there should be some left over crowns for next year, somewhere.
Mirabell Mozart: Expensive chocolate balls, that appratently I’ve tried before. Well, this year I got some for mum and Anki surprised me with a box, so I could try some. Sadly, they were a disappointment, don’t bother buying in the future.