Christmas Tidings

Happy New Year to the baking blogosphere.


As I mentioned in my Happy Holidays blog, there was a whole lot of baking going on. After dealing with the aftermath of the 2008 Ice Storm, the only thing left to do was celebrate the season with family and friends. The first few batches were delicious butter cookies, frosted in festive fashion. Then, Christmas week, we got down to business.

Biscuit and I met up with Kerri and her Favorite at the family compound for a night of gingerbread baking. There were all sorts of cookie designs made (for anything further on that topic, I recommend you drop Kerri a message for elaboration), but Biscuit and I specialized in the more traditional fare.

Biscuit preparing his dough

On the way to the oven

All plumped up after baking

Here are the final products, all decorated and ready for consumption:

You may notice, next to the piglet, the bespectacled and button snowmen, and the two handsome Santas, are a different variety of cookies. These are my famed rugelach, requested by my mom to be baked for any holiday or family function. These are from a recipe I found after watching a Food Network Christmas cookie program. They can be found at the Barefoot Contessa website at http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/rugelach-recipe/index.html . The dough is a delicious cream cheese-based dough that is really easy to make. The tricky part comes in the preparation. The dough gets divided into quarters, then chilled, then rolled out, filled with jam, walnuts, and sugary cinnamon goodness, then CHILLED, then eggwashed, then CHILLED again, and then finally baked. The result, however, is worth all the time and effort.

I regret that I do not have any close-up shots of the rugelach, as they are delicious and quite elegant to look at. However, I have a nice shot of my very tasty sugarplums. While people have heard and even sung the praises of sugarplums, I have found that few people ever ate them. There was no way this curious baketress could ignore this mystery. I did some research and I found a recipe that appealed to me. These cookies are often made with stone fruits, but I found a recipe on Cooks.com that used maraschino cherries instead of figs or dates. The dough consists of the basics - flour, sugar, etc - but then is combined with ground walnuts and oats. This dough is shaped around the maraschino cherry, baked, cooled, and then dredged in a mixture of sugar and cinnamon.

Here is the final product:

I gave the sugarplums as a gift to family and friends along with these snacks. I have always loved Florentine Lace Cookies and have only ever seen them dipped in chocolate in Italian bakeries. These variety, a recipe from Rachael Ray's Everyday magazine, are called jeweled lace cookies. They are embellished with cranberries and pistachios. The cookie, when made according to recipe, have a mere 35 calories per cookie.

They are crisp, nutty, and delicious. I may try to make them again with different versions of fruit and nuts, or may omit the nuts all together and just dip them in chocolate. The cookies are made in a pot on the stovetop. While the recipe indicates you can take the batter directly out of the pot, I recommend you allow it to cool. This is not simply because it is hard to handle the hot batter... it's more a matter of the batter being incredibly sticky and caramel-y while it is still warm.

My final two creations of 2008 were pies: one sweet and one savory. To the right you will see another Rachael Ray recipe - her delicious German Chocolate Pecan Pie. While it is tricky to see the details, this is your traditional pecan pie - corn syrup and all - but it includes a twist. Once the pie crust is made, you pour in half a bag (or more, if you wish) of chocolate chips. They begin melting in the pie pan almost immediately. Next, you pour in your pecan mixture with the beautiful addition of sweet, falky coconut. The result is perfection! This is best served warm with some vanilla ice cream.

The last pie was of the pizza variety. While Biscuit and I had plans to battle the New Year's Eve snow and head out to Shrewsbury for sushi, we submitted to staying in for an evening of Guitar Hero on the Wii with a barbeque chicken pizza. We used no recipe - just our own taste buds. We mixed premade pizza sauce with barbeque sauce; grilled some chicken on our trusty Foreman grill, and used purple onions and some fresh, sweet basil, along with a mixture of shredded Cheddar and buffalo mozzerella. This was the completed pizza, only seconds before we dug in.

Biscuit and I are trying to behave between now and the wedding so we can look svelt for the big day and for our honeymoon to the Dominican Republic. I am sure there will still be some healthy baking and dessert making going on, as I can nary resist the sweet stuff.

Until next time, happy eatings!