regularly scheduled baking: christmas cookies

i'm not going to type out all my christmas cookie recipes. i'm just not. because, gentle readers, it's a pain in the ass.

BUT. (haha, see what i did there? the segue? from ASS to BUT?)

here are my resources:

1. cookies by lou seibert pappas, copyright 1980, nitty gritty productions
2. joy of cooking by irma s. rombauer and marion rombauer becker, copyright 1975, the bobbs-merrill company
3. the international cookie cookbook by nancy baggett, copyright1988, stewart, tabori & chang, inc.
4. favorite brand name old fashioned holiday recipes, copyright 2004, publications international, ltd.
5. the internet (i had to google the quaker oats oatmeal cookie because... i bought generic oats? last winter? in the midst of a HUGE oatmeal kick? and then it got warm again?)
   

cookies was bought second-hand from the helen kate furness library in wallingford, pa, for (i THINK) thirty-five cents. it's now held together with duct tape. joy of cooking was... a gift? or i bought it for myself. THAT narrows it down, doesn't it? the international cookie cookbook is a loan from my mama, who probably means to get it back someday, so i should probably copy out the one recipe i use. favorite brand name... was a gift from my mother-in-law and is full of fantastic recipes that i don't make, plus two super-easy fudge recipes and a biscotti made with cake mix that i do.

i'll be wrapping up the holiday baking on friday (or saturday) and then focusing on christmas dinner. and sometime in there, i SWEAR i will blog about bûche de noël. AFTER THAT, i promise a pasta-making tutorial for dear julia.

and, speaking of julias, while you're at it, you MIGHT AS WELL make a thousand. (this? is pretty much julia child in a nutshell. and my baking philosophy.)

easter pie OR pizza rustica OR calzone

we call this dish calzone-- but we say ghav-uh-zoon-- and we pretty much live for easter so we can have it. we love it so much we'd make is other times of year, but you can only get basket cheese at easter, so we can't. because of the magnitude of this project, we have to do it at my mother's house where there are three ovens, and the occasional excitable teenaged brother willing to forgo book learnin' to get elbow deep in family tradition for an afternoon.

dough ingredients:

• 20 cups of flour (plus more for dusting)
• 2 tbs baking powder
• 2 tbs salt
• 6 cups vegetable shortening ("crisco: it's digestible!")
• 19 eggs
• 3/4 cup ice water
• egg wash (milk & 2 beaten eggs)

filling ingredients:

• 3 pounds sweet italian sausage, out of the case, browned
• 3 pounds ham, diced
• 1 pounds soprasotta, thick-sliced, diced
• 1 pound proscuitto, thick-sliced, diced
• 1 pound ricotta cheese
• 1 basket cheese, diced
• 20 hard boiled eggs, diced
• chopped fresh parsley
• 6 eggs

prep:

• hard boil 24 eggs, chop 20 of them and set aside
• brown sausage
• dice meats & basket cheese
• combine meats
  

• combine dry ingredients for dough

• blend in shortening
  

• add eggs & water
• blend thoroughly
• turn out and knead (or massagia)
  
  
  
• add basket cheese & parsley to meat
  
  
  
• preheat oven(s) to 375*
• break for a lovely lunch of egg salad sandwiches (those last 4 eggs!), carrots and limeade. it's traditional.
  

• add hard boiled eggs to meat
  

• add raw eggs & ricotta to meat
  

actual cooking:

• roll out dough into large circles

• paint egg wash around edges
• pile half with filling
• fold other half over
• crimp edges
• move to a greased baking sheet
• brush with egg wash
• vent

• bake at 375* until browned and bubbling
• cool for 5-10 minutes (depending on the size) on the sheet
• move to a rack to cool completely
• serve lukewarm or cold
  

this recipe made 2 extra larges (about 16"x8"), 7 larges (about 10"x5") and 6 smalls (about 8"x4"). that's a lot. but somehow, we always need as many as we make. they freeze so well that we usually have one in january to hold us over.

blue ribbon lamb cake

this is a molded easter lamb cake baked in a blue ribbon bakeware easter lamb mold using the blue ribbon bakeware lamb cake recipe. the mold belonged to my great grandmother, and she used this same recipe (which came with the mold). last year i tried to use a joy of cooking white cake recipe and it turned out really hard and dry, so this year i'm using the recipe that's worked for 60+ years because, to quote the recipe, "in all our testing and use there was no leakage of batter-- no breakage of the nose or ears and the cake was removed very easily."

ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1tsp vanilla
• 2/3 cup milk

prep:

• grease & flour mold
• preheat overn to 375*

actual cooking:

• combine flour, baking powder & salt, set aside
• cream butter
• add sugar
• add eggs & vanilla
• add dry mixture alternating with milk
• place mold on edged baking sheet
• pour batter into the front side of the mold
• place the back side on top
• bake for 45 minutes
• remove mold, back side first and allow cake to cool upright
• frost & decorate

because i hate coconut, i frost the cake with white frosting (after an attempt at boiled butter cream & regular butter cream yesterday, i settled on duncan hines fluffy white for this) and sprinkle green sweetened coconut around it. you could, instead, gently press the coconut into the frosting. i made the lips with 1/4 of a pink jellybean and the eyes with a split black one, but the traditional decorations are 1/2 a cherry and 2 raisins.

batter poured into the face side of the mold

back side of the mold on top

cake removed from mold (face-up)

the bow is at one end of the ribbon and secured to the other end with a dot of frosting

fastnachts: mardi gras pennsylvania dutch style

mardi gras, fat tuesday, fatty/fattening tuesday, shrove tuesday, pancake day, fastnacht day or paczki day is the day before ash wednesday when, depending on your language and tradition, you use up all the "luxurious" ingredients in your pantry before lent starts and they all go to waste, by making doughnuts, pancakes, crepes or parade floats. you know, those luxuries like eggs, butter and sugar.

the pennsylvania dutch call their doughnuts fastnachts (yeah, that means "fast night" as in "fast and abstain" not "i blacked out!" that's more mardi gras...) and make them without holes and out of potatoes. i didn't really make fastnachts. i made doughnuts without holes. close enough.

i started with the black & white donut hole recipe from williams-sonoma. then i doubled it and cut the bullshit.

ingredients:

• 7 cups flour, plus 1/2-1 cup for dusting
• 1 tbs baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 4 eggs
• 4 cups sugar (2 for the dough, 2 for coating)
• 2 cups buttermilk
• 1/4 cup (half a stick or 4 tbs) unsalted butter, melted & cooled
• vegetable oil for deep frying

prep:

• sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon & salt
• beat eggs until frothy
• add 2 cups sugar to eggs and beat until lemony-yellow
• add buttermilk & butter to egg mixture
• pour egg mixture into the center of dry mixture and combine to form a very soft, sticky dough
• roll out to 1/3 inch on a generously floured board
• cut out 3-inch circles & 1-inch circles
• refrigerate overnight

actual cooking:

• heat 3 inches of oil in a large saucepan or deep fryer if you can get your hand's on one (thanks mom!) to 380*
• fry doughnuts in small batches

• turning frequently until golden (about 5 minutes)
  

• remove from oil with a skimmer
• deposit on paper to drain
  
  
• put remaining sugar in a paper bag
• drop in warm doughnuts & shake to coat
  
  
• wake up your loved ones
  
  

i started frying at 3:45 this morning, had my doughnuts packed up for delivery (3 1/2 dozen regular ones + a few dozen little ones) by 5. i was eagerly greeted at the door by della, dottie & ginger (the dogs). ginger even mustered the strength to jump from the floor to the dining room table without a chair stop-over for the first time in her 12 years to snag a bite. everyone seems pretty happy with the results. as a matter of fact, the only person who got doughnuts that i haven't heard from today is anthony.

duck a la' half-ass

"i think," i said, possibly before i even really had the thought, "i'll make a duck for christmas!" and then... it was. that was sometime in mid-november. i ignored the plan for about a month and then decided it was time to purchase the duck. (duck? is expensive. wow. the little 6-pound bugger i bought ran me $18! and you gotta figure, with a duck, about two and a half pounds of that was fat the just dripped off. but i digress.) so, i went to the "real" supermarket-- which is less intimidating than a butcher or a farmer's market where i might see feathers or something-- and snagged a frozen duckling.

all eating ducks are apparently ducklings. i discovered that in my internet research after the joy of cooking offered options for trussing and de-boning "the bird." also? they're mostly farm-raised, to the extent that you could call a thing that lived on average eight weeks having been raised. because they're mostly farm-raised, they're mostly not super fatty like wild duck, if you buy them frozen in the supermarket, at least. because they're not super-fatty, you do not have to prick the skin, no matter what your grandmother insists.

so, this is how i cooked the duck.

ingredients:

• a duck
• oil spray
• salt

prep:

• defrost the duck
• dump the blood, guts, neck and orange sauce packet out of the duck
• (call somebody to brag that you just handled duck guts on freaking christmas!)
• place duck breast-up on a roasting pan
• spritz with oil, sprinkle with salt
• preheat the oven to temperature prescribed on duckling packaging

actual cooking:

• put the duck in the oven
• follow directions on duckling packaging
• cook until duckling reached 180 degrees in the thigh joint
• warm up orange sauce
• move duck to a new plate and cut into edible pieces (note: the wings aren't worth a damn and the legs aren't worth much more. also: the whole damn bird is dark meat.)
• serve with orange sauce (the one that came out of the duck's, ahem, cavity.)

a duck, as a main course, will serve about a person and a half, maybe two. i served duck alongside ham, garlic smashed red potatoes, cornbread stuffing with onions, lima beans, roasted broccoli & cauliflower, brussel sprouts with bacon and rosemary bread.

christmas cookies 2008: finale

(sorry for the picture... i had a much more dramatic one planned, but for some reason blogger & i don't agree on how the picture should be oriented. and the sideways-cookie thing was not doing it for me. at. all.)

so... funny thing. when you're spending every free moment baking, it's hard to find a moment to write about baking. to sum it all up: they were wonderful. had i gone through it blow-by-blow, you can bet i'd have been singing a different tune. i was, in fact, in my kitchen, and it was a pretty bawdy tune. with crying. but i learned some things.

1. i need more flour-- like, twice as much.
2. vanilla does cost just as much at trader joe's as it does for the store brand at the supermarket-- the difference is, tj's bottles are twice as big.
3. it's difficult to buy chocolate when you boycott nestle and hershey's... trader joe's to the rescue!
4. the broiler won't just melt the jam... it'll burn the shortbread.
5. a candy thermometer makes all the difference.
6. a quarter of an inch is a lot thicker than i think it is.
7. a little less flour makes the dough softer. ummm, duh?
8. too much water will ruin gingerbread.
9. expensive non-stick baking sheets really are non-stickier than the regular ones.
10. wilton sells no-taste red food dye.

i made everything i was supposed to make, pretty well, plus some extra fudge for gifting. i had a couple mishaps, too, like when i broke the christmas tree plate for my cookie press with my super-tough dough. i overdid it, of course, but i'm sure the recipients of the extra bags don't mind-- and let's face it, everybody has a lonely, old neighbor who will appreciate being thought of (though, perhaps not as a "lonely, old neighbor"). now i have some new cookie recipes and ideas to work out before next year. maybe then, i'll get through it with a little less crying.

cooking-related christmas gifts: a pastry workshop (on sunday!), subscriptions to bon appetite and martha stewart's everyday food and a giant cupcake cake pan.

cooking-related new year's resolutions: cook one thing from each magazine and bake cookies year-round-- not just christmas!

oh, and one final thought:

christmas baking is not complete without a nice set of... giant chocolate chip cookies.

christmas cookies 2008

on the first day of modern christmas, also known as black friday, i hit the stores like every other nutcase. only i had them almost all to myself. i was at the grocery stores.

i went to the local supermarket first, hoping to buy everything in one shot. i was mostly prepared. i had edited last year's list (removing cookies that didn't work out, adding some new ones, changing amounts) and mapped out the recipes on my christmas cookie spreadsheet. what, you don't do that? huh.

i estimated, generously, how much i'd need of everything and prepared a comprehensive list of things i needed to buy. it is as follows:

• rolled oats
• 10 pounds flour (i already had 5)
• 1 bag confectioners sugar
• 10 pounds granulated sugar
• 4 pounds brown sugar
• 24 teaspoons vanilla extract (who said my system is perfect? i bought two bottles of the store brand and i hope it's enough. if not, i think trader joe's brand is cheaper, actually.)
• almond extract
• 18 ounces of milk chocolate chips
• 48 ounces of semisweet chocolate chips
• 28 ounces of white chocolate chips
• 1.5 cups slivered almonds (i take the shortcuts as they come)
• 2 cups walnuts
• 1.5 cups unsalted macadamia nuts
• 2 cups dried cranberries
• 3 chocolate-orange cake mixes
• a lemon
• candy canes
• peanut butter
• seedless raspberry jam
• 13 pounds of butter
• 4 dozen eggs

so, i bought nearly all of it at the supermarket and then moved on to trader joe's. there i bought the butter (because it was, like $1.30 cheaper per pound, and that adds up when you're buying thirteen!), the almonds, the macadamia nuts, the eggs ($1.50 cheaper, at least, i forget the exact amount), the white chocolate chips and the milk chocolate chips (i try to avoid buying either hershey or nestle for political reasons. i bought store-brand semisweet.) and tried to buy the chocolate-orange cake mixes. but they didn't have them. so i might have to actually make my biscotti dough, which might mean more flour and definitely means a trip to the supermarket for orange essence.

there was other stuff, too, of course. stuff i already had (mostly not shown):

• instant coffee
• 3 ounces semisweet bakers chocolate
• molasses
• light corn syrup
• decorating sugar
• vegetable oil
• cream of tartar
• anise seeds
• cinnamon, cloves, ginger
• gluten-free flour

and stuff i wasn't sure would keep until i had that confection scheduled, namely, heavy cream. which i can buy next door or at any supermarket/grocery/dairy store. so i'm not worried.

i also picked up some decorating frosting in little tubes and what appear to be markers for use on... food. creepy. but possibly very useful for the making of gingerbread people with a four year old. and a boneless turkey breast-thing, a box of stuffing and a ritter sport bar (totally for bill)

cookie-related shopping came in about $14 under budget (without the cake mixes and heavy cream, though) and $11 over estimate (so far). but really, good enough for me!

next up, look for springerle cookies (which i've actually already baked) and 4 batches of peanut butter cookies (which i'm baking tonight as soon as i get the pretty-bottomed glass from my mom-- i'll explain later).