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.