A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

St. Lucia Day: St. Lucia Saffron & Raisin Wreath

 

St. Lucia Day is celebrated throughout Scandinavia and in Italy where St. Lucia was born and died a martyr under the Roman Emporer Diocletian, circa 300 A.D.  The story goes that while she was carrying food supplies into the catacombs to hiding Christians, she needed her hands free so she fashioned a wreath of candles in her hair to light her way.

That story, combined with Medieval superstions about the winter solstice being a night of evil lurking in the dark giving way to the light and goodness of morning, transcended into a celebration of St. Lucia, the girl with the lighted wreath in her hair leading the people out into the literal and philosophical light, freedom, and goodness, by having the oldest daughter of the family dress in a long white dress with a red sash and a wreath of candles in her hair serve saffron buns and coffee to her family on the morning of the holiday.

The story has always appealed to me.  As the oldest daughter, I like the idea of serving my family and if part of that is cooking, then I'll be there with bells on.  Or candles on. Or a mag flashlight or anything that won't burn me alive in the process of the fun.

To mark the day two years ago I made individual swirled saffron buns. They were lovely tasting but I wasn't crazy about the way the raisins looked. No big.  This year, though, I went for a different presentation method and loved the results!

Dough in the Fridge: Easy Cut Outs, Cinnamon Horns, and Candy Cane Cookies on the Fly

For me, one of the keys to the Christmas season is to be prepared as far in advance as I can so that I'm not sweating out the small stuff during the rush of parties and get togethers and folks dropping by. That's usually my theory. This year I've gotten most of the cooking done but have yet to pull a single decoration from the attic and only half the presents are bought. But hey, the Christmas cards are out!!

One of the cooking shortcuts I've been faithful to, though, is keeping refigerated cookie dough on hand to be able to bake off as needed.  I've also learned to take one dough and make a couple of variety of cookies to save myself the monotony of cut out cookies in a line so endless I want to throw cookie cutters in the garbage, but the dough is a very versatile base.

I haven't even gotten to the cut outs yet but for the neighborhood Christmas party tonight I"ve worked up these two winners: 

Oh Fudge!: Peanut Butter Fudge, Egg Nog Fudge, and Opera Fudge Two Ways

The bottom layer is Kraft Fantasy Fudge substituting peanut butter chips for chocolate chips, the top sqare is old-fashioned (no marshamallow cream) Egg Nog Fudge from Jan McCracken's cookbook A Taste of Ozark Mountain Christmas, and the rose is fashioned from homemade soft caramels.  The gingerbread men sugar decorations are a gift from the wonderful folks at The Amish Country Store in Branson. 

Holiday baking is all about the family.  When I was growing up, and I mean this in no way disrespectfully, my mother was a little difficult to live with.  She died when I was in my early 20's and my brothers and sister were teens, but if she were alive today I am convinced she would have been diagnosed as Bipolar.  One of my biggest regrets is that she was not able to get the medical help she needed.  I have mentioned it a few times, not because I want to dwell on the past, but because it helps explain MY love for the holidays.  When I was growing up, our home was filled with lights and laughter, music and good will, and lots and lots of baking and smiles from Halloween through New Year's Day.  The rest of the year was a little rough.  We loved the holidays because it was when Mom was at her best and we all genuinely cherish those memories, they were the best of Mom and we loved her for the joy she brought to us through knitting, cooking, and being happy.

It's no surprise that I love all those things too.  Knitting and cooking for others are the ways I was taught to show love and I am very grateful for those lessons and being able to continue those traditions.

Another family secret I've talked about before is that only a very few of us are big chocolate eaters (James! ) with the exception of dark bitter chocolate.  Most of us could walk away from milk or semi-sweet chocolate any day of the week.  But Peanut Butter? That's a different story altogether.  We'd walk on beds of nails for peanut butter fudge. Same goes for white chocolate or good ole vanilla.

Today happened to be Make All the Cookie Dough and Get It In the Fridge to Chill Day along with Oh Fudge! Day.  On the list to make was a double batch of our traditional peanut butter and then I wanted to make a new recipe from Jan McCracken's cookbook A Taste of Ozark Mountains Christmas for Egg Nog Fudge. I know it will be a huge hit.  What could be better than mixing the silky spiceful taste of eggnog with the sugar meltiness of homemade fudge?  Not much!

By the way, I ordered three more copies of this cookbook to give as Christmas presents. I don't think there was a recipe in it I didn't want to try.  It's a "Christmas" cookbook but it had everything from candy and cookies to a whole section on cheesecake, plus all the normal categories like entrees, appetizers, etc. The book is laid out nicely with great downhome recipes with simple, easy to find ingredients, and easy to follow, uncomplicated directions.

Support Your Local Merchants: The Amish Country Store

I came in tonight from a girls' weekend in St. Louis and found a package waiting for me that said "Merry Christmas!" written in green Sharpie on the outside.  Hmmmm....I thought "Well, I have ordered a couple of Christmas gifts but someone from Amazon is certainly overrun with the holiday spirit!" Wrong, the sender was definitely packing holiday spirit but the box wasn't from Amazon, it was from another of my favorite stores:  The Amish Country Store in Branson.  The punchline is I hadn't ordered anything from them lately.  As Alice would say "curiouser and curiouser."  Opening the box, I found a lovely note from Matt Hayes thanking me for supporting them as local merchants and a sleigh full of goodies! 

OMG, I am so touched! Thanks Matt, your thoughtfulness really means the world to me. Completely unnecessary but beyond appreciated!  I am so happy that your family and mine have crossed each others paths in life.

On top of the goodies, that I am trying to decide whether to share with family at the family Christmas dinner or just be selfish and save for Gene and I (oh, I'll probably share! They're all much to good to hoard for just us), there was a lovely cookbook ATaste of Ozark Mountain Christmas by Jan McCracken filled with recipes from her Branson Bed & Breakfast. Matt also mentioned in his note that he'd shared my blog addy with Jan and that she enjoys reading me.  After flipping through the book and her web site www.janmccracken.com listing all of her books and tales of her B&B, I can say it's a mutual admiration society--way to go, Jan!  I have to tell you that the first recipe I turned to was for eggnog fudge. My family members are not big chocolate fans so we're huge fans of non-chocolate fudges like peanut butter, maple, and opera but we ALL love eggnog so guess which recipe will be the first I try?  THANK  YOU!  I have a feeling that one is going to become an instant family tradition.

You know, the world is full of wonderful people. I am so blessed to have been befriended by so many of them in life.

Happy Thanksgiving: Turkey and Dressing Casserole as First Run or Re-Run (Thanksgiving Leftovers Casserole)

I drew the short straw this year and ended up working Thanksgiving Eve and the rest of the weekend. But never fear, we can still have our Thanksgiving, both at work and at home.  For work, I volunteered to handle turkey and dressing.  Because I work at a hospital (Respiratory Therapist) it's not quite the same as an office where we can forward the phones to voice mail and everyone sit down to a celebratory dinner together.  We're scattered throughout the building on the general floors, in Pediatrics, the NICU, and the adult units.  So the upshot is we have to eat in shifts. That means a traditionally carved turkey with dressing on the side is not only impossible to cook or warm up at work in a microwave, we need to keep the food at a safe temperature for at least an hour if not a little more so that people can filter down from all parts of the building in between vent assesments and therapies, not to mention any type of patient crises. We all say a quick prayer going into holidays, for ourselves and for patients and their families, that there will be no codes or other crises.  And we were lucky this year. We had a few patients who struggled but we were able to get them help quickly and there were NO code blues! Yay!

The answer to the food dilemma for our work dinner turned out to be turkey and stuffing casserole, the kind we can keep at a good temp in a crockpot throughout the evening after arriving at 6pm until our 1am dinner time.  This casserole is also a great use for leftovers to freeze for a later date or just for the ease of leftovers throughout the holiday weekend.

Better Than Paula Deen Buttermilk Pie: Choo-Choo's Buttermilk Pie by Crescent Dragonwagon

 

For the 1,000 folks who clicked on my blog yesterday specifically looking for Paula Deen's Buttermilk Pie, I have a better recipe for you.  No offense to Paula, whom I love dearly and whose recipes always get me compliments, THIS buttermilk pie recipe from The Dairy Hollow House Cookbook by Crescent DRagonwagon is da bomb and it is the recipe I have used for years. I did try the Paula Deen recipe the one year I blogged it but I immediately went back to my Crescent recipe. Is the best I've ever tasted and tha'ts saying something considering I, and my family members, are huge buttermilk pie fans!

Choo-Choo's Buttermilk Pie from The Dairy Hollow House Cookbook

by Crescent Dragonwagon

A New Generation of Thanksgiving Pie Makers: Pumpkin and Straight Up Pecan Pie

 Jordan's pie baking debut! She volunteered to be in charge of desserts for the family Thanksgiving party this Saturday and did a wonderful job. Her only request was that she wanted to make some of the pecan pies in smaller mini servings (chicken pot pie pans) just for fun. No prob.  I sat in a bar stool at the counter while she did everything. 

The only thing I "did" was explain why certain things are done a certain way, like running melted butter down the side of the bowl when it's time to add it in while mixing so as not to cook the eggs or why I check the pumpkin and pecan pies with a meat thermometer to test for done-ness.  Eggs set at 140 degrees so at 135-140, you can safely remove the pies from the oven and the little jiggle left in the middle will firm up as it cools.  To bake until the entire pie is set solid is overbaking it and the fillings won't be as tender and moist as they could be if it had been pulled right at the "just done" point. The same is true for quiche.

Great job, Jordan!  We all thank you so much and can't wait to dig in!

 Jordan's pie baking debut! She volunteered to be in charge of desserts for the family Thanksgiving party this Saturday and did a wonderful job. Her only request was that she wanted to make some of the pecan pies in smaller mini servings (chicken pot pie pans) just for fun. No prob.  I sat in a bar stool at the counter while she did everything. 

The only thing I "did" was explain why certain things are done a certain way, like running melted butter down the side of the bowl when it's time to add it in while mixing so as not to cook the eggs or why I check the pumpkin and pecan pies with a meat thermometer to test for done-ness.  Eggs set at 140 degrees so at 135-140, you can safely remove the pies from the oven and the little jiggle left in the middle will firm up as it cools.  To bake until the entire pie is set solid is overbaking it and the fillings won't be as tender and moist as they could be if it had been pulled right at the "just done" point. The same is true for quiche.

Great job, Jordan!  We all thank you so much and can't wait to dig in!

Fruit Cake IS Good...if you do it right

All my life I've thought fruit cake, even my cake baker Mother's, was the nastiest food on the planet.  It's dry, it's got GREEN pineapple in it, poisonous maraschino cherries (okay, just because they're approved by the FDA doesn't convince me that soaking cherries in formaldehyde, and then recoloring them with red dye and chemical flavors, makes for something good for the body), it's dry, it's tasteless, it's dry... well, you get the idea. You've all been tricked into taking a bite of the stuff at least once in your life. And I bet your swore off it too.

When I started blogging I noticed that all the English bloggers got all excited and into Christmas Cake each October/November and spent the next couple of months "feeding", nurturing, and dreaming out loud of their Christmas cakes.  I wondered what this wondrous stuff was.  I mean, come on, I grew up in a cake decorator's household and grew up to be a baker for a while too.  Was there possibly some divine cake I'd never heard of or made myself?  I looked more closely at those cakes on those blogs and was shocked, shocked I tell you!, to see that Christmas Cake was that other awful "F" word--Fruit Cake!!!

At first I thought it must be the seventh sign of the Apocalypse that a whole country would enjoy making AND EATING such a repulsive cake but then I started looking at the recipes and methods more closely and saw my favorite "B" word, as in "booze".  It was my Oprah "AHA" moment heard 'round my house!  The answer to good fruit cake was laid out in front of my eyes.  Our Puritan forefathers had obviously screwed the pooch on this one when they denied me alcohol in my fruit cake.

Okay, seriously, I think part of my problem with fruit cake is that I always expected fruit cake to be  "cake" and to Americans, cake is light and fluffy. I think it should be called "Fruit Bread"  because, honestly, it's much more of a fruited bread in texture and density than it is a cake, although the cake designation may come from the idea that a lot of non-Americans bake theirs in round cake tins, where we're used to the long square log of nasty.  So once I wrapped my head around the idea that it's really a bread, then I took the recipes that I'd been playing with this summer and combined them with my own baking knowledge to come up with my personal fruit cake/bread recipe that not only tastes great but doesn't require a cup of coffee or tea to wash down the sawdust aftertaste. It comes out a dense, moist bread with a sugary, fruity taste and a pop of smokiness from the whiskey.   It's good straight out of the oven but really something special after being fed for a month or two.  Give this one a try and you might change your mind about fruit cake like I did.

Happy Halloween '09!

Scaring up a bunch of spooky treats, half for our family Halloween party and half to take to work to share with my favorite vampires and ghouls:  Witch's Fingers Pretzel Rods,  Orange Popcorn Balls, and "RIP"  Cookies.

Click below for Popcorn Ball recipe.

And don't forget our Blockbuster Halloween Monster Makin' Contest! Deadline is Sunday night, November 1st so you still have time to help the kids make any kind of monster they want out of movie candy.  Send a picture to me at Marie9949 (at) sbcglobal.net for the chance to win a $25.00 Blockbuster movie gift card.

Halloween! Holli's "Twilight" Birthday Cake

Cake decorating is one of my favorite food arts but because it's so tough on one's hands, I only do it for family these days, specifically for our nieces and nephews. The rule is that for their birthday I'll make anything they want.  One year, Sydney wanted a butterfly. Check.  Boy Jordan wanted an Eric Carr (the fox) from KISS cake. Check.  Girl Jordan wanted a car cake. Check, although it was made from rice krispie treats rather than cake which added to it's value in her eyes.  Holli's birthday falls the week before Halloween so her request was doubly appropriate for both the holiday and the latest vampire craze.  She asked for a Twilight-themed cake.  On the inside is a cherry chip (family favorite) cake torted into five layers with homemade buttercream between each. The covering is black marshmallow fondant (I think it looks like leather).  Everything on the cake is made from sugar with the exceptions of the apple and the ribbon.

Not having read the books, I didn't know what the icons all stand for but Wednesday night at work Carissa and I did a quick google and found that the apple represents man's (and vampires') free agency: the choice between good and evil, innocence and corruption.  The red and white flower is for purity stained by blood.  The chess pieces we found nothing on but it seems pretty obvious that the king represents the vampire and the pawn represents humans in their eyes.

Fun cake. I had a great time putting it together.  Happy Birthday, Holli!

For the recipes and tips on cakes, see my prior cake posts:

Marhsmallow fondant recipe:

http://afridgefulloffood.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/05/day_1_the_cake_.html

Sculpting a truck cake for Isaac and tips on stacking cakes:

http://afridgefulloffood.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/05/day_1_the_cake__1.html

The finished truck cake and Jordan's retro black and white cake:

http://afridgefulloffood.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/05/day_0the_cakes_.html