Further Holiday Baking

Blogger is not letting me cut and paste today, so this post took forever. I hope you damn well appreciate it.




So. Airplane cookies. They are done, along with some snowmen, some trees, and some lighthouses. These are from last year:

This year, The Man excused me from having to frost them (thanks!), so they turned out like this:

Clearly not Air Superiority Blue. For the first time in his life (as far as he remembers), The Man decorated Christmas cookies. He helped with about half, and then I excused him to watch Liverpool-Arsenal and finished them up myself. No Fernando Torres, Fabregas got injured, and Adebayor got sent off, so fewer compelling players for me to watch.

Airplane cookies. That's that.

But wait! There's more! The cinnamon rolls are in the freezer. How do you make cinnamon rolls? Well you start by making a babka dough in the big mixer. Babka is a sweet yeast dough with butter, eggs, sugar, and sour cream. Because of all the extra fat, it turns out very smooth and silky. Add the flour until the dough cleans the side of the bowl.

Keep going.

I said, UNTIL THE DOUGH CLEANS THE SIDE OF THE BOWL. Do the sides of the bowl look clean to you? It's not like you're doing the work by hand so be patient.

Now it's ready. Please to knead.

You could do all the kneading in the mixer, but then you might as well use a bread machine and what's the point? I always do some of it in the mixer and then finish it up by hand. All of this, of course, is performed under the supervision of Mess Sergeant Yarn Bandit. His job is to beg for taste tests and to lick any flour or drips off the floor.

And where is Kirby during all of this? He used to watch from the sidelines, but now he's more aggressive. Here's a less intrusive version of his "help":

See how he leans in? I think he likes me. This, however, is a typical chef's eye view:

That would be him, wedged between me and the cabinet (in this case, but could be stove or the sink), often standing on my feet.

Anyway, if the babka looks like this:

then you have some more kneading to do. When you're done, the dough will feel satiny and heavy and smooth and have a little bounce to it.

So you put it in a bowl and set it somewhere to rise. On days when the temperature doesn't go above freezing, I do it in the oven (turn the oven on, let it get up to about 110 degrees, then turn it off). Let it go until it is about doubled.

Then punch it down. Literally.

If you have a lot of time, knead it about 10 times, reform it into a ball, and then let it rise again. At some point, though, you need to stop. Roll it out into a big ole rectangle (more or less). Brush with melted butter.

Sprinkle with a mixture of cinnamon and brown sugar (and nuts if you must, but you know how The Man feels about male baked goods).

Then roll it up.

See? Easy.

Then I slice the roll into pieces about an inch thick or so and put them in the pan. The recipe itself says "cram" them in and so I do.

And now they go in here, somehow, until the 24th, when they go into the fridge to defrost and rise one last time.

Yes, those are biscotti.

On Christmas morning, they go into the oven and when they're done in there, they get drizzled with icing.

I'd rather not have to do them in advance. I'm never completely sure that the turn in the freezer won't hurt the yeast somehow. However, since Babette does not live here, the only alternative to doing them in advance is getting up at 3 a.m. to make sure they're done for breakfast, and that ain't happening.

Holiday Baking Update

We all you know are curious about how Bunny's friend Mr. Kitchen Aid Mixer (thanks Daddy!) is doing this December. He is getting a fair combination of rest and exercise. Here is where we are so far.

• Fruit cake. I only wanted one, and only a little one at that, but my recipe is for several big ones. What to do? Many years ago, before her sexist public school education sucked it out of her, Bunny was a math semi-genius. She usually needs The Man to do arithmetic for her, and Mr. Laptop balances her checkbook, but Bunny can still do food-related math and geometry. Some things are just too important to forget. So fruit cake is basically nuts and dates and candied fruit with enough batter to bind it together. EUREKA! Bunny filled her mini-loaf pan with enough nuts and dates and candied fruit to fill it firmly with a little crown on top. Then she divided her batter recipe by four (seven eggs divided by four equals two eggs, but who's counting?). Then she dumped the nuts and dates and candied fruit into the batter and mixed it up until everything was nicely coated. Then she scraped the nuts and dates and candied fruit back into the mini-loaf pan and pressed it down firmly. Then she poured enough of the remaining batter over the nuts and dates and candied fruit to fill the gaps without overflowing. Then she baked it and WOW a little bitty fruit cake! Then she cooled it. Then she soaked some cheesecloth in Myer's rum. Then she wrapped the fruit cake in the rum-soaked cheesecloth. Then she put the whole thing in a Ziploc bag and pressed the air out and put it all in the freezer, where it will stay. On December 23, we will thaw it out and on December 24, we will serve it. Perfect.
• Biscotti. We did these yesterday: almonds and amaretto and candied ginger. The house still smells like them.
• Airplane cookies are on today's to-do list. Today I mix and chill the batter and tomorrow I roll it out, bake it, and decorate it. Tomorrow is the big day (and the biggest mess), so that is the only thing on the agenda for tomorrow.
• Today I am making a spice cake for Christmas Eve dessert. An old-fashioned spice cake with penuche icing (look it up. If you are reading this, then you have Google.) Again, a big one is too much for our little house. Well, not really. I could probably eat a whole one if I tried, but that wouldn't be good for me and it would stop being fun after the second piece. So I cut the recipe in half and I'm baking it in a square pan (it's in the oven as we speak) and the plan is to cut it in half and stack the layers so we end up with a rectangular loaf-shaped cake. Anyway, today I make the cake and freeze it. On Christmas Eve, I'll defrost it and frost it (har har).

There are few left on the to-do list for later in the week, not least of which is a Buche de Noel, because I didn't make one last year. But that all comes later.