A stress-free festive feast

The Batch Lady Suzanne Mulholland shares cooking tips to help you enjoy Christmas Day. By LAUREN TAYLOR

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SUZANNE Mulholland once declared she “hated” Christmas Day - she was the person who ended up organising the entire event, from presents, to decorations and, of course, the food.

“When the kids were little, I actually didn’t like Christmas,” she admits. “I didn’t feel it was my day. I felt like it was everybody else’s day.

“I look back on it now and think I really did miss some key moments where I would have loved being the one sitting just helping build Lego, or whatever it was, but I felt tied to the kitchen.”

To make a busy life with children easier Suzanne, 49, started batch cooking, and after sharing videos on YouTube and Instagram, social media's ‘The Batch Lady’ was born.

The mum-of-two was able to transform Christmas so she wasn’t cooking all day.

“I started to change gradually. I would make sure my roast potatoes were done, but I always felt like there was quite a lot that maybe I couldn’t do in advance.

“And then over the years, I've actually managed to do it all in advance. Everything.

“If you happen to have a Friday morning or a Tuesday evening in November where you're not doing anything, you can think, actually, I might get four recipes done for Christmas.”

November is the perfect time to start, she says, and buying a lot of your Christmas food in November can help spread the cost.

Suzanne has two types of recipes.

“Either you ‘cook ahead’ - which means cooking it and putting it in the freezer, or ‘grab and cook’ which means you're making it up raw, and then you're putting it in the freezer,’ she explains.

Here's how to make it work for you this Christmas...

FESTIVE CAMEMBERT PUFF PIE

(Serves 6)

INGREDIENTS:

(Prep: 20 minutes)