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.