Like I said last year at this time, cookie season is not over, but it’s winding down. But boy, reading last year’s summary compared to this year makes me feel like I had it great last year. Not only was the party on a Friday, so I had all day Saturday to recover, before starting […]
On Monday, I made the two kinds that are basically ground nuts and butter, rolled in sugar. The Mexican wedding cookies – or Russian teacakes, or pecan balls, or crescents. One year I even made a family cookie recipe that had been contributed to Gourmet that was called puckle warts. They were really delicious but […]
I feel like a great weight has lifted. Yesterday I turned these: into these: In sort of two installments. I had 11 dough balls, of which I got 5 rolled out and baked by 3:00. We walked over to a friend’s Christmas party – a pleasant gathering of mostly librarians and teachers. It took about […]
I made all six kinds I thought I would on Sunday, more or less, but I’m not so happy at how everything turned out. The chocolate spritz are fine – I had a little trouble with the cookie gun, getting the handle end unscrewed in order to refill it – but compared to the pistachio, […]
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 […]
I’ve been feeling totally overwhelmed by the brief the cookie season this year, contrasting against other years when I had more done by this date, and even two weekends in cookie season without one of them being Thanksgiving. Then some phrases started creeping into my mind, like, “Maybe I can skip the pine nut macaroons […]
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 […]
We’re doing Black Friday Thanksgiving again, for the third time in a row, so it’s officially a family tradition. It puts us outta whack with the rest of the world a little, but it’s really nice (as Mark said when we were out walking yesterday) to have Thanksgiving as an empty day, for the cook […]
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 […]