Cleanliness is next to cookies.

[mrissa]

I have put my finger on one of the things that bugged me about the appliance salesbeing we had. He kept trying to set himself up as our Only Friend. He made a big deal of giving us a direct number to call him so that he could intercede with the company for us, and if the delivery people didn't do it right, why, we could just call our pal and he would make it all better. And the thing is -- I have had better experiences with delivery people than with salespeople, in this arena. The delivery guys today were clean, quiet, efficient, cheerful, and considerate of walls and woodwork. And I would far rather have a salesperson who assures me that their delivery people are fantastic but gives me a contact number anyway than one who acts as though they're naughty toddlers who may scribble on my walls with green magic marker if I don't get him to intercede. No phase of this consumer relationship had to be adversarial in the slightest. And Only Friend attempts set off warning bells in my head -- not as severely in a limited and distant relationship like appliance salesperson as they would in a romantic or familial relationship, but still.

Anyway, there are clothes getting clean right now, this very minute.

I expect I'll finish at least one short story today. Two would be too much to ask for, but I have more than one story sitting around nearly finished. So. House tasks and short stories, is what, and then tomorrow morning back to book stuff. That's my current theory, at least; life intervenes, of course, but variety etc. etc.

And I just had a bit of Russian blueberry gel chocolate, so International Bonbons and Movie Magazines Month proceeds despite an abundance of practicality surrounding me.

We have determined empirically that the world will not cease turning if I don't make an apple crisp in mid-October and oatmeal sugar cookies for Reformation Day, but I'm still a little discombobulated by the lack and not sure where to go next in baking terms. I don't think I can catch up and still get Christmas baking to come out right, but I don't know what I want to do for Christmas baking this year, really. This is the sort of thing that takes many phone consultations -- the more so this year because we will have five bakers at Christmas, not four. Onie only does rosettes, so that's easy enough to work around, but for example I won't do oatmeal sugar cookies for Christmas because Grandma always does the regular kind and two kinds of sugar cookie is kind of a waste of cookie assortment when we could have apricot shortbread or something instead.

Hmm. Onie and the grands will be here for Thanksgiving. Maybe we will make krumkake. Mom and I press on the irons and Grandma and Onie roll on the cones. We're already doing lefse, so either we might as well or it'll be too much. See what I mean about many phone consultations?

What kind of baking do you want for your winter holiday of choice? And do you do it yourself or enjoy someone else's efforts or both?

Comments

odd octobers

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

stretching into Novembers. I just made a batch of oatmeal raisen cookies this Sunday, along with getting in the apples, and I haven't done either of those in a while. The cookies had the whol house smelling nice. I almost typed loved.. how weird.

I was thinking today about T-day also. I am taking the train down though so need to check with Kristen and see what would be doable there that is also practical.

I think the best thing so far was cut out cookies. Regular frosting, or gran's special; but I paint them. I was thinking about doing that again this year if we're going to be far apart again. I suspect we are. The rest of the baking is Snowballs, Horns, Pecan tarts, Jelly cookies. Gingerbread. Chocolates but easy ones like dipped pretzles or Buckeyes. Bars of course.

And glog. Which is not baking but demanded by the Benni.

Re: odd octobers/posts

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

The bit about the cookies was for Christmas. :) Thanksgiving is pies.

Re: odd octobers/posts

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, my grandma does pies for Thanksgiving. Pecan and pumpkin are the local standards. I melt dark chocolate into my piece of pecan pie.

Re: odd octobers/posts

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

We had a chocolate/pecan pie last year, I think, and it totally rocked. Carry on.

Re: odd octobers/posts

[brooksmoses]

When my grandfather ran a restaurant, one of the desserts on the menu was a chocolate bourbon pecan pie -- basically a standard pecan pie, but a layer of chocolate in between the gooey filling part and the bits of pecan crusting the top. It was utterly yummy, and I pretty much grew up assuming that all pecan pies should have some chocolate in them; the ones that don't have it seem to be missing a little something.

(Sigh. Meanwhile, I think that's the first time I've talked about his restaurant in the past tense; he only had to close it fairly recently, after nearly three decades of running it.)

Re: odd octobers/posts

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm so sorry.

Still, though: chocolate and pecan pie. It's awfully good.

Re: odd octobers

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Of course the house smelled loved. Oatmeal helps a great deal with that.

I have the best cookie cutters. I am so smug about my cookie cutters. I have a rocketship and a shooting star and the state of Minnesota and a moose and a train and....

[pezwitch.livejournal.com]

Ah, such memories I have of making krumkake with my mother. I did the pressing, she did the rolling. I always burnt my fingers when I tried to roll.

I am also quite fond of russian tea cakes, although they are rather futz-y to make.

(We've met a couple times at parties thrown by mmerriam and careswen, for your reference)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My grandma no longer has any temperature sensation in her hands, she's been scalding them with her dishwater for so long. I'm all for hot dishwater, but Grandma really takes it to an extreme. So she rolls and I don't have to get burnt.

I am not making molasses taffy again until I have a child reading historical novels and asking what it tastes like and whether we can have a taffy pull. (Other people's children will serve in this regard.) It's even worse for burning fingers than krumkake rolling. Uff da.

I like Russian tea cakes, too.

(And hi!)

[pezwitch.livejournal.com]

Oooh, molasses taffy! Sounds unusual and tasty. I came up with my own recipe for mint taffy when I was about 10. It was green... and. Well. Not even remotely like taffy, because I was 10 and didn't know how to cook. But hot damn, it was green.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think the two "old" kinds of taffy are saltwater and molasses. I've never made saltwater, nor do I expect to when you can buy it in a multitude of flavors at any tourist trap you care to name. The orange moose on the way to Mark's folks sells it, for heaven's sake.

My friend Becca tried to come up with a cookie recipe when we were 11-12, but she didn't include...um...flour...or any flour substitute...I was not there for this debacle. Even at 11 I had a better idea of cookies than that.

[carbonel]

I served the function of said child many years ago, and my mother made taffy for me. Unfortunately, it was not molasses taffy (I'd neglected to specify that part), and no matter how much I stretched, it refused to become lighter in color, as the book claimed it ought.

Tasted good, though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Shortbreads are important. I have done apricot, lemon, and blackberry in the past. Don't know what I'll do for shortbread this year, but definitely something.

Lefse is a potato flatbread. It looks like a tortilla but is made with potatoes. It's best hot, with a bit of butter, but Certain Parties will mislead you into putting white or brown sugar on it. (See icon for example of Certain Parties.)

Lefse can also be used at Thanksgiving to make an Ole Taco: leftover turkey, stuffing, cranberries, and gravy rolled into a piece of lefse. This is Traditional Scandosotan, by which we mean invented by someone of my parents' generation.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

There will be pie around Thaksgiving, though exactly what kind og pie I do not know. I suspect it will be two pies, one somekind of fruit-filled two-crust, the other something with a meringue.

Around Christmas / Yule I will make something with nutmeg and molasses, something with a gingerbread smell, because nothing puts me in mind of the winter holidays more than the smell of gingerbread.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, I make pepparkakor, Swedish gingerbread, every year. Some years I also make some loaves of Guinness gingerbread. Good stuff all around. House smells right.

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

My Twelfth Night baking sometimes gets out of hand. There have been years when I did 50 plates of cookies, each with 1-2 dozen assorted cookies of 8-10 varieties.

My standards are: ginger cookies, pfeffernuse, shortbread, lemon bars, basic roll out christmas cookies. I also sometimes do nutballs, gingerbread, snickerdoodles, oatmeal lace, fudgy oatmeal bars and some variety of chip cookie.

I am fascinated with the concept of oatmeal sugar cookies. Will you share the recipe?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sure (http://www.marissalingen.com/oatmeal.html).

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I am totally making these sometime soon.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Let me know how it goes.

[carbonel]

ObCopyeditor: In that recipe, you have "two many" where it should be "too many" -- unless there's an obscure joke I'm missing.

And I've bookmarked the recipe.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I'm not the baker. But Thanksgiving *and* Christmas require mince pie. Family tradition also makes pumpkin pie, which I like quite a lot when the mince is gone. But I don't consider the pumpkin a requirement. No traditional cookies. I think maybe my mother used to make a fruit bread for Christmas morning for a while, but it apparently didn't become a requirement for me (though it was nice). Cookies aren't part of the family Christmas tradition, either family of origin or current family. They appear to be on Pamela's side.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My grandma makes cinnamon rolls for holiday mornings -- not just Christmas but Easter etc. as well.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

i make cookies, about half of them turn out great ... the other half, i eat. i give the good half to people for gifts. (now imagine me giving some perplexed one a nice box of half-cookies...)

i can't do rolly-cookies, god knows why. probably i don't have a decent surface. either they're too wet and the dough sticks to the rolling pin, or they're too dry and the cookies taste like flour. any suggestions?

but i make mean PB cookies, and mean oatmeal cookies, and mean cookies with white chocolate and dried cranberries.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It is hard to make rolly cookies in the Bay Area, heaven knows. But having a little dough stuck to the rolling pin with a layer of flour over it is not the end of the world, either.

Also, many recipes that go with cut-outs can also go with cookie stamps, so you could just buy a cookie stamp and smoosh them instead of making cut-outs.

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

Christmas means Nanaimo Bars, a British Columbia specialty consisting of one layer of coconut/nuts/chocolate, one later of buttercream (alternately, peanut butter), and one later of chocolate on top. They're fantastic--and good for winter because they're very melty. And we've become assimilated enough to the South that there's usually a pecan pie, too. (A pecan pie that passes muster even for native-born southerners!)

I do not do the baking myself, but I sure do enjoy it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My Canadophilia ends with the Nanaimo Bar, I'm afraid, because I dislike coconut rather intensely.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

I don't bake--cookies or otherwise. I don't have to!

Every Christmas so far, my wife has grand plans for how many Christmas cookies she's going to make. Every Christmas so far, I try in vain to remind her that her job gets too busy at the end of the year to be able to count on making umpteen kinds of cookies. Every Christmas so far, we eat Christmas cookies that her mom/aunt have made.

But we have St. Patrick's Day cookies. At least we did last year.

[carbonel]

Chanukah means sugar cookies to me, with sugar sprinkles on top, cut in dreydel, six-pointed star, and menorah shapes. Also scalloped circles (like a primitive flower), because that cooks well and is easy to make and my niece likes those best.

I don't actually like sugar cookies all that much compared to other types of cookies, but they're definitely linked with Chanukah.

Another Chanukah delicacy is souvganiot, a fried cake rather like donut holes, but I never had those until I visited relatives in Israel, though I'd encountered the term in books. My mother never made them.

I put together boxes of homemade baked goods for several years as holiday gifts, but I got tired of people accepting them without much in the way of apparent pleasure (and they were good baked goods), so I gave that up. That was a long time ago, though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I like souvganiot, once in awhile, and I don't get them anything like that often.

I think my grandmother may feel that way about sugar cookies: that they're Christmas cookies, more than that they're specifically favorite cookies.

I should give you the list of people I've given baked goods to, because many of them snarf quite happily -- overtly happily.