For those of you worried for my sanity, I do this every year. I enjoy it. In fact, I don't have enough people to give the baking away to this year, and I'm doing it anyway. Hell with it. It's part of my holiday ritual, and I like it, so I'm gonna. The husbeast can unload it on the guys at work, and I'll give it out to everyone I know locally (Terby, you are on my hit list).
Trish, I don't think I'm making fuckeyes this year. Sorry.
The reason I'm coming up with a kajillion recipes is, I know myself. Once I get everything dragged out and in place, my thought process goes something like "Heck, this is all out anyway, I might as well make (fill in the blank - cookies, bread, seven layer cake, linzer torte, croquembouche, a nuclear reactor)." So it's better to have a plan, or in this case a list of recipes, than it is to just turn me loose in the kitchen when the baking urge is on me. That's how we wound up with crumb cake at Thanksgiving. You know, the recipe that starts off by melting three sticks of butter (because the holiday food wasn't enough calories or fat, we needed more). "Heck, I've got the stuff out to make pie... might as well do a crumb cake."
This year, though, I have a plan to help me not gain weight. Ready?
I'm gonna bake stuff I don't like.
That's right. My in-laws are all big fans of fruit cake, and I can't stand the stuff. So fruitcake it is. They also like citrus (that lemon merengue pie at Thanksgiving?) and I have no trouble resisting it. I've located a recipe for lemon truffles. You get the idea. No doubt I will break down and make something chocolate, and I had a specific request for the shortbread toffee chip cookies that I love, but mostly... it's gonna be lemon, by god.
On the other hand, Bouche de Noel has always eluded me... I'm gonna give it another try this year. (I got my second wind on sponge cake after watching Tyler Florence totally fuck up a Bouche de Noel on Iron Chef last week. Does the heart good.) With luck I might even make merengue mushrooms and maybe some spun sugar spanish moss, for southern authenticity.
Yeah, yeah, I need my head examined. But I'll have fun. If only baking too much was the worst anyone did in the world.
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9 comments:
I tried that strategy once. I developed a taste for new foods.
I am pretty much hopeless when it comes to resisting any and all "holiday" foods...
I have found that holiday baking and candy making is a big part of Christmas for me. Right now we don't have anything decorated and haven't done much else in preparation for Christmas, but today I made caramel and peanut brittle and marshmallow centers for nut rolls and it immediately started feeling like Christmas. I also made caramel for the first time a few years ago because my mom always screwed them up and I wanted to see if I could do better. Turns out I really like good homemade caramel (and a challenge of course).
Christmas baking is something my kids and I do, too, without fail, every year since they were born - I like your idea about making things you don't like - you had me, you really did, and then you wrote about toffee shortbread cookies... and I must ask you for the recipe -
I am weak
hee hee hee...I lost my mind and told chicken I'd actually bake chocolate chip cookies--the real kind that don't come pre-mixed or anything... I won't say "Goddess help me" because she's OBVIOUSLY going to be at your place, talking you into chocolate:-)
Good, then that means a) I can unload some of my cookies on you and b) I'll see you again this year! Whee! It's been way too long, lady...
Baking is one of my favorite Christmas things. I'm having tryouts this week. Biscotti made it.
Poo. I want fuckeyes. But I don't want them bad enough to make them myself. I'm not into tourture.
Have fun.
Trish
This is the one time of the year that I indulge my love of cookies without any guilt whatsoever. We have a list of favorites that "it wouldn't be Christmas without" (my family's words). I bake the week before the holiday because they would get eaten otherwise.
Okay, what are fuckeyes and how do you make them?
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