Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

I contend that Martha Stewart booby traps her recipes – it’s usually not in the ingredients. It’s usually in the method – she gives an instruction that  causes the recipe to fail, like the recipe for baby artichoke quiches, where she said to mix the wine & cream for the sauce together and heat them – which makes them curdle. Or did for me anyways. This year, the December Martha Stewart Living has a recipe for pistachio spritz cookies. Ground pistachios in a vanilla butter spritz cookie with a dash of almond extract – what’s not to like? The hinky instruction is to add water to the dough, after the flour has been mixed in, which in my experience, makes dough sticky and tough. So I decided to use less flour, and leave out the water. OK. But then it came time to press the cookies through my spritz cookie gun. I had ground the pistachios fine in the food processor, with the powdered sugar, until I had what was apparently pistachio flour. I bought a new blade for the food processor this cookie season, too. But when I tried to press the cookies, pieces of pistachio kept clogging the gun. I ended up using the plainest, round disk, and ended up with simple rounds with a ragged edge. If I make these next year – and I think I will, and amp up the almond extract, and salt – I am going to scoop them and press flat with the bottom of a glass. That will give the same shape, more consistently, and more easily. I like the mini-Hershey’s kisses on the top, but they are evil – mini-kisses, already unwrapped, in a bag, from which large handfuls can go directly into mouth …

I made the pecan bars on Thursday night, along with the pistachio spritz. Last year I got fooled by a pecan bar recipe in Food & Wine – they had a spread with really nice photography of flat pies, but they came out too squishy, and a little burnt around the edges. This year, I went back to my standard pecan bar recipe, from Silver Palette. And I made a lot – two half sheet pans. No problems except I never can cut the bar cookies as evenly as I wish I could – but oh, well, people want big ones and small ones, right?

Friday I had a funny back and forth day – I went to work, and managed to get through a sizable percentage of email by noon. Mark came to meet me, and we walked home, and I baked the spoon cookies – or most of them anyhow. I had to go back to campus to meet with a candidate for a position, as part of their excruciating academic interview, which include a presentation, and meeting with all kinds of people, and meals. But when I got there, there’d been a room change, of which I was not told, and I missed the meeting. It meant a nice 45 minute or so walk for me, so by the time I got home I wasn’t even mad. The oven had barely cooled off, so I baked the last three trays of spoons, while checking in with my classes, and when they were all out of  the oven, I recorded a lecture. Mark and I went off to the Madison Symphony Christmas concert, which was pretty fun this year. They positioned Irving Berlin’s White Christmas next to an original by Madison’s Leotha Stanley, The Spirit of Christmas is Love, near the end of the second half, right where I would’ve been ready to say, “OK, enough”.

Home and jammed the spoon cookies – ended up with 172, (341 little spoonfuls, paired up for the sandwiches) a good number. I didn’t get to bed till about quarter to 1:00 so I’m taking it easy Saturday morning – in bed till 7:20, and drinking coffee in pajamas at the computer. Gonna go for a walk, and then go into baking mode – I am planning 6 kinds today: Chocolate spritz, peanut butter sandwiches (made small this year), coconut cookies, fig bars, a chocolate peppermint I have been eying for years, chocolate toffee bars and then maybe raspberry almond bars, and make the dough for the boomerangs. I’ll let you know how it works out.

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And, oh, yea – season appropriate current iPhone wallpaper –

We had 25 for Black Friday Thanksgiving – it was pretty astonishing. I made the turkey and the stuffing, and garlic mashed potatoes (Megan and Max peeled, I just mashed), and gravy, and corn pudding – which was a really good batch this year. Instead of my chipotle lime brulee’d sweet potatoes, I made a big pan of roasted vegetables with reduced cider,  parsnips, rutabaga, carrots, sweet potatoes, that stuck terribly, but people said they liked it. We had a few appetizer-y things, pickled carrots – they were good this year, too – and chex mix of course, but also cheese and crackers, and leek confit, and beet caviar, and seedy bread. Jane brought risotto, Susan brought greens from her garden, and Deena brought some spicy sweet potatoes, to make up for the ones I didn’t make. We had too much pie, if that’s possible – I made 4, 2 pumpkin and 2 apple, and 2 more pumpkin were brought as well. What people really ate was the trifle – when I was rooting through the freezer for old bread for stuffing, I found some gingerbread, and made that into trifle with pumpkin butter, lemon curd, vanilla pudding with an orange peel steeped in it, and lots of whipped cream. There was more of everyone else’s pie leftover than mine, so I suppose that’s something.

And a couple of people said, really of everything, the turkey meat was delicious – thank you Matt.

Hannah and Al loaded the dishwasher, and Ann stuck around and washed pots and pans.

I woke up when John & Megan came in around 3:00AM, which was good since I ran the oven cleaner – I’d forgotten before I went to bed.

On Saturday, I had big visions of doing a lot of baking, but somehow, with moving furniture back into its normal spots, and errands, and making turkey and vegetable broth, and and and … we went to an early show of the Hunger Games – Mockingjay 1, came home and ate turkey sandwiches, and I only made the baby fruitcakes. Two sizes, because of course I bought the wrong size of bon bon cups – to my credit, the only right-size ones were hot pink, and the slightly bigger ones – we’re talking 1-inch vs. 1 1/4-inch here –  were much more Christmas-y, holiday colors, red green, gold. No pictures of the fruitcakes – maybe on platters at the party.

The kids all went off to watch the Badger game. John and Megan came back around 10:30, when I was officially wimping out on cookies, and actually doing a little work on my online courses. As usual, there was way too much turkey broth, so I strained it an boiled it down – 2 pots boiling furiously on the stove while I was shut up in the sun room with my courses & the baby fruitcakes with their glaze setting. Everything was all steamy when I came out, and something like 10 quarts of broth was reduced to 2. Oh, and I think I made the dough for the ginger creams, too.

On Sunday I got up and went for a walk. I made cinnamon chip scones to use up the leftover whipped cream. They came out puffy and good. I made fried potatoes, and scrambled eggs with cottage cheese and Parmesan in them, and a whole pound of bacon. Al grabbed a few strips of bacon, and a few of the crispiest potatoes right out of the pan, and left for Chicago before sitting down to eat with us, but John and Megan and Mark and I ate about 11:00, and John got back in time for the Packer game, too.

The plus side of having people around is that I washed all the sheets, and towels and bath mats  – since I usually sleep upstairs with Mark, mostly only the cats were sleeping in my bed, so it was getting pretty cat-hairy and making me feel like a bad housewife, plus it still had summer blankets.

I did the Moravian Ginger Thins first, and they’re just not quite right this year. Too thick, and the edges aren’t sharp. Hmm. Then I baked the ginger creams, so they could cool to be frosted. And made linzer thumbprints – which were an absolute disaster last year, and quite nice this year. Don’t know why it took me so long to learn to use my own linzer dough recipe. Although I suffered terrible indecisiveness when packing them on Monday morning – to layer with wax paper or no. The voice in my head that usually knows best was saying the cookies would stick less to each other than the paper, but the inner eye was seeing crumbs from the cookies above marring the shiny pools of jam on the cookies below – and the eye won. We’ll see who was right when I unpack the carton in 10 days or so.

I made the almond cookies with chocolate stars glued on top – this recipe always makes an unbelievable amount – according to the recipe I should have had about 144 cookies and I had more like 244. But I like it when the cookie is not too much bigger than the chocolate.

I made the frosting for the ginger creams with just butter and lemon juice and zest and powdered sugar, but it didn’t seem like enough, so I threw in what was left of the glaze from the baby fruit cakes – powdered sugar, sherry and bourbon, and another glaze leftover from the Pfeffernusse – powdered sugar, butter, and cream – and somehow all three things melded to make a really tasty frosting. I put it on thick.

I stayed up until 12:30 frosting and cleaning up after myself. Today, Monday, is springerle and the plan was to make all the doughs for the slice & bakes – pistachio cranberry, windmill, chocolate world peace, and crystallized ginger – but I only did the ginger. Pics later.

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On Monday, I made the cinnamon-almond star cookies, that are gluten-free – Zimmetstern, and the peanut butter chocolate swirl brownies, Hootie Swirls. I tried out a new star cookie cutter, but I only made a few with it, since the points were too long and skinny, and kept getting plugged with dough. I also made two different pans of Hootie Swirls – a sheet and a deeper, 13 x 9 x 2 – and I think I over baked the sheet. Annoying, because there are twice as many from the sheet pan as the 13 x 9 x 2. You look at the pictures and decide.

Tuesday I went to a going away party at Graze, for a fellow REAP volunteer, who’s moving to the Twin Cities. When I got there, Tory Miller, our Madison star chef (and super nice guy) who owns the place was sitting in a booth eating with a friend. My first thought was, “man, that guy must be successful, if he can sit in his own restaurant”, but Terese pointed out that might be the only way he gets to eat. Especially since he just opened another place. but it does underscore what I’ve always thought about Tory – he must be a really great boss, because he trains his people so that his places run right even if he’s not at the stove.

Anyways, I didn’t get home until a little after 7:00, so my big visions for the night downsized. I made the Orangette fruit & nut balls, which still need to be glazed with chocolate (their “hats” Ms. Wizenberg calls it). I made the dough for the tiny Pfeffernüsse (Peppernuts), little spice cookies that I make with a glaze instead of tossed in powered sugar. [Prior sentence copied exactly from last year’s post on November 25th.] And I soaked the fruit for the fruitcake gems in booze, but I don’t want to bake them until tomorrow, because I don’t have enough powdered sugar to make their glaze – I’m planning to use most of what I’ve got for the Pfeffernusse glaze.  And the chex mix just came out of the oven.

Pfeffernüsse & glazed fruit balls added to slideshow.

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On Tuesday there was one box of cookies in the vestibule, the Joy of Cooking Lebkuchen, a cookie that’s supposed to improve with age.

Lebkuchen

I put a slice of lemon in the container to keep them moist. Usually it’s apple, but lemon seemed a good idea in this case

Wednesday night I made the jam cookies, and I thought I had six trays … obviously can’t count, since there were seven, although one tray is actually a small ceramic dish that only has a dozen in it.

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Yesterday I drove to work, so that I could make it from a meeting that concluded at 4:20, to pick up my two giant Tipi produce winter share boxes, and then home in time to login for class at 5:30. I made it, but the jam cookies were setting in the sunroom where my computer is, with the heat vent closed, so I quick transferred all seven trays to the vestibule, and opened the heat vent. Then I stashed the Tipi box that had the green vegetables, the one where I could see kale peeking out, in the vestibule, closed it up, and had class. After, I wrapped all the jam cookies, and froze them, and put the produce away. It’s going to be a trick to get all the Thanksgiving food and cookie ingredients stored away, but it’s one I’ve pulled off other years.

Tipi Boxes

What’s inside

Then I made the Biberli, as I told Megan, the pornographic ones, because the name means “little beavers“. They’re one I struggle with every year – too big, too small, too soft, too hard … I think I got a good mix this year – a few are too big, but none seemed too hard – I didn’t even put an apple (or lemon) slice in the container to soften them, although I may do that later.

Biberli

And speaking of the vestibule – after years of complaining that omigod it’s 50° (or 60°) in effing December, NOT good weather for cookie storage, this morning it was 3° in effing November, not so good for walking, but certainly good for cookies. And squash, that’s also out there.

So, (I just heard a piece on NPR, where their grammarian said listeners hate it when interviewers start a sentence with “so” – but this isn’t NPR) I had huge piles of work to-dos for the weekend; not sure I made it through enough of them, but I tried.

In between work stuff, cookie season began. I made my cookie list with Megan’s cat Ham “helping” – lying across my papers and my arms while I tried to write. I’ve laid in some of the ingredients, like today I got honey and jam and various candies that go in or on cookies, like red and green M&Ms and chocolate stars. I’ve placed two King Arthur Flour orders, and have plans to do the rest of the shopping. Currently there’s about 15 lbs. of flour and 11 pounds of sugar and 7 pounds of butter in the house – a mere fraction of the total. Shopping’s a little trickier this year, since Mark’s in Chicago half time, and sometimes has the car. And I’m just so stupid busy, hard to plan a time to take off and buy mass quantities of butter, flour and sugar. The list says 30 cookie kinds in 20 days. Sure, I can. I’m hoping to not get demoralized, like I was last year – I’d take a picture, and decide that the same cookie as made the year before, or even two years before, looked a lot better. Case in point:

2013 cinnamon stars

compared to

2012 cinnamon stars

You can see that the meringue topping is whiter and more solid in 2012. I think I didn’t whip the whites enough in ’13.

Or even:

went flat linzer thumprints

from 2013, vs.

Thumbprints

from 2011.

At least I don’t have systems analysis class this year … and the party’s got a great date – 12-13-14!