Cake With Raspberry Filling and Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

At first, I told my mother-in-law that I'd bring cookies for Easter dessert. I've got springtime cookie cutters and a pile of pastel-frosted flowers and bunnies and eggs would look nice and Eastery on the table. But while cookies were easy to make, cookies were not what I wanted to eat. I just couldn't shake my craving for a lemon and raspberry dessert. I went rogue.

I'm not really a food blogger, so don't critique my lousy photos.

The Cake

I made a white cake from a box to save myself a little time and trouble. I made 2 8-inch rounds so I'd get a nice 2-layer cake. I was not adventurous enough to go for 4 this time.

The Raspberry Filling

4-6oz fresh raspberries or frozen (thawed) raspberries

1/4c to 1/2c raspberry jam

Mash up the raspberries and jam until you get a nice lumpy raspberry goo. Spread it on top of one of the cake halves, leaving empty space at the edges for the inevitable oozing when you put the cakes together.

The Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting 

1  8-ounce package cream cheese
1  cup  confectioners' sugar
zest of 1 lemon, grated
Splash of lemon juice

I used this frosting recipe from Real Simple but ended up using less sugar than it calls for. I tasted it after one cup was added and decided I liked the balance of sweetness and tartness. If you like a sweeter frosting, then go ahead and add more powdered sugar. Also, be careful with the lemon juice. If you add too much, the frosting gets runny. Mine did, but it went on thick enough to coat the cake and firmed up just fine in the fridge.

The cake was a big success at Easter and it's already been decided that I have to make it again, preferably soon. I'm okay with that.

The Smashing Of The Bunny

It's a funny thing, to watch an octogenarian grin wickedly as she crushes a chocolate bunny's skull in her wrinkled hands.

The Smashing Of The Bunny is a decades-old Easter tradition in my family. Every year, a large hollow chocolate creature of some kind sits at the center of our Easter table, nestled in neon plastic grass, surrounded by Hershey kisses and Cadbury Creme Eggs.  A bunny, a hen, sometimes a squirrel, quietly waiting for us to finish our plates of deviled eggs and honeyed ham.

Waiting to meet its doom.

A different executioner is selected every year, and each family member has a different signature approach to the job. My brother grips the bunny's ears, and then delivers a sweet right hook to obliterate his belly. More than once, we had to retrieve bunny shards from the kitchen floor. My sister has a clean, top-down approach with the chocolate hens, bringing a swift fist of justice down onto her victim. I am the decapitator, squeezing the hollow neck until I feel a crack, and then lifting the chocolate head high in victory.

When I was first asked to bring dessert to Easter dinner with my in-laws, several years ago, I brought along a lovely chocolate bunny. The family was a little puzzled at first when I explained that after dinner, we would beat him into the chocolate chips from whence he came. Luckily for me, they're more than happy to include my family's strange ways with theirs, and we have had a Smashing Of The Bunny every year since. I'm incredibly grateful.

Because Easter isn't over till a chocolate bunny dies.

 

Merry Christmas To All

Merry Christmas, everyone.

I hope you've enjoyed a breakfast with your loved ones and shared some smiles and hugs beside the tree as everyone unwrapped their lovingly-chosen gifts.

As with a traditional chocolate-filled Advent calendar, the doors to all my daily ornament stories were opened by Christmas Eve. I hope that some of my stories made you smile, because I had fun writing them. I got a lot of writing practice done, and I'm pretty proud of myself for getting through 25 straight days of posts. I think I'll take a few days off now to think up some new stories and thoughts to share, and to stretch my wrists and fight off the carpal tunnel issues that are surely settling in.

Here's a list of the ornament stories, in case you missed any:

December Blog Project

1. The advantage of sensible shoes
2. It's not real, but it's spectacular
3. Bonjour, hi.
4. Night Owl
5. The Best Game you Can Name
6. The Chocolate Moose
7. Interdit
8. Reindeer Prints
9. She said Duh!!
10. Unphotographed Memories
11. Yes, Virginia, this is a honeymoon
12. Chocolate Raspberry is a Gateway Coffee
13. The Christmas Pageant Where I Was A Beet
14. Mononuclear summer
15. Fighting for the Top Spot
16. The hills are alive with Mozart
17. Cruisin' on down to Awesomeville
18. Ring in the Season
19. Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves
20. WYSIWYG
21. (Guest post) It’s Kind of Like They’re the Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen of Christmas Ornaments
22. Plate it Out
23. Home
24. Not Pony Tails or Cotton Tails But Duck Tales (woo-oo) 

A final thought to leave you with, courtesy of Dr. Seuss:

Christmas Day is in our grasp
So long as we have hands to grasp.

Christmas Day will always be
Just as long as we have we.

Welcome Christmas while we stand
Heart to heart and hand in hand.

Ring in the season

This is the 18th of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here. Note: it's entirely possible some of these memories are inexact, but I'm sticking with them anyway.

I will always have bells on my Christmas tree. They are a reliable early-warning system for cat-related tree disasters.

But that's not why I do it.

In my heart, bells mean Christmas. You've got the Carol of the Bells, Jingle Bells, Silver Bells, bells everywhere. There are so many Christmas songs about bells because bells are joy. Joy because you made it through another year. Joy because of the family around you. Joy on little kids' faces as they open their presents, and joy on their parents' faces as they watch with love.

I love the beginning of How the Grinch Stole Christmas when every Who down in Whoville, the tall and the small, are decorating the town for Christmas. There's a Who delightedly pulling on a rope and ringing a row of bells, ringing out joy over Whoville. Despite the efforts of the Grinch, Christmas came. It came all the same.

I love the end of It's a Wonderful Life, when George stands with his family in front of everyone who loves him, everyone whose life he has touched in ways he never realized. A little bell rings on the Christmas tree, giving old Clarence his wings at last. To be surrounded by love, to be the richest man in town and realize that you mean so much to so many - that is joy.

Bells feel like old-timey Christmas, like Scrooge running out into the street in his slippers after his night with the spirits, and hearing the church bells ringing out the joy of Christmas morning. Promise. Hope. Joy.

I can't hear something like this and not find tears in my eyes. Is it just me?

And now, to help you recover from an emotional moment, please enjoy what is, as yet, my favorite rendition of Carol of the Bells.

Fighting for the top spot

This is the 15th of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here. Note: it's entirely possible some of these memories are inexact, but I'm sticking with them anyway.

Every year, after the lights are lit and all the ornaments are on the tree, my husband and I stop a moment and argue. We have vastly different opinions on the correct item to place at the top of the tree, and this ideological rift follows us from Christmas to Christmas.

He's from an angel family. I grew up with stars. Well, with something like this, if you can call it a star:

Image from uniquechristmastreetoppers.com

 

Now that I think about it, it's possible that we sometimes had an angel on the tree when I was a kid. Could my parents have had this same argument, year after year? Have I dragged this feud into the next generation? I'll have to ask them.

As for our home, things haven't devolved into uncivilized and violent Coke vs. Pepsi territory yet, but each of us is clearly disappointed if the "wrong" thing is at the top of the tree. I'm not sure how to best move past our differences. We alternate years, for now. I'm careful to take a picture of the tree each year as evidence so we know whose turn is next - gotta keep it fair.

Last year, I thought I hit on the perfect solution. I found a Yoda tree topper. With LED glowing lightsaber. Not a star, not an angel, but something we could both enjoy. A tradition we could hand down to our future children, a way to make the annual debate a distant memory of an unenlightened time. Unfortunately, when I took Yoda out of the box, his lightsaber was broken in half. 

A sign. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack. Was treetop Yoda my passive-aggressive way to win and get rid of angels for good? I hung my head. I put him back into the box. I returned him to the store.

For now, compromise, we must.

The Christmas Pageant Where I Was a Beet

This is the thirteenth of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here. Note: it's entirely possible some of these memories are inexact, but I'm sticking with them anyway.

What is this thing?

This ornament is an apple. It's hard to tell, because it's the wrong color, and only vaguely the right shape. If I tell you it's an apple, then you can see it, and you'll say "Oh, of course, an apple!" I had a similar problem with my costume for the Christmas Pageant Where I Was a Beet.

We did a pageant every year in elementary school. For weeks, we would rehearse songs and memorize lines. When pageant night came, we'd stand up on long wobbly benches on stage in the cafeteria gym auditorium in front of everyone and endure flashbulbs and overzealous parental applause.

One year, for some reason, it was decided that my grade's contribution to the pageant would be a song and dance routine in which we would play the role of vegetables, stored in the barn over the winter. I don't remember the details, except that the song was in French and we did a sort of happy square dance, celebrating winter.

We were winter vegetables, of course, so nobody got to be anything fun like lettuce or green beans. I was to be a beet. My friends got to be onions and carrots and potatoes, and I was jealous. Those were edible veggies. Nobody liked beets except my weird Dad who liked the little pickled ones that left his fingers purple and his breath vinegary.

After assigning vegetables, the teacher rolled out fabric for our costumes - white crinkly paper. That kind that all huge elementary school banners are made of. The kind that gets drawn on with thick, opaque "gouache" paint and fat brushes. We each got a big square of paper to outline our vegetable on. The teacher had a book of cartoon vegetables for the picky eaters among us to refer to in our artistic endeavors. We each drew our vegetable, then mixed paint to the right shades and slopped it onto the paper. When the paint was dry, we cut out the shape with our green plastic round-tipped scissors, then traced it to make a second identical shape to use as the back. The two halves got stapled together and stuffed with crumpled newspaper to make awesome 3D turnips and squashes that would hang around our necks on loops of twine. I felt better about my beethood when I saw how the potatoes turned out. They looked like lumpy poops.

On the night of the pageant, students lined up in the hallway according to grade, and fidgeted in our dress shoes. There was much shushing. When the previous class was approaching the end of their performance, my teacher led us into the dark gym. Single file, along the wall. Parents sat in rows of folding chairs lined up in the center of the room. Some turned to look at us as we walked past, because our costumes crinkled.

We got to the stage and waited in the wings. The "wings", for our purposes, meant the run of seven stairs and the tiny landing, stage left. The previous class sang their last note, the crowd clapped, and one of the tall Grade Six kids pulled on the rod to close the accordion curtains. There was a whispered commotion as the teachers ushered the other class out via the tiny landing and seven stairs, stage right. We were given the signal to take our places, and the curtains opened again. Time to be a beet.

Edited to add a terrible and embarrassing picture of the costume in question:

Opaque white tights and horrid florals were in fashion. I was not raised Mennonite.

Reindeer prints

This is the eighth of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here. Note: it's entirely possible some of these memories are inexact, but I'm sticking with them anyway.

Potatoes make good reindeer hooves. This is something my parents taught me.

I must have been 7 or so, because I was sharing the purple room with my sister then, and my parents had moved their bedroom down into the half-finished basement space. Before that, all three of us kids shared one small room, with bunk beds for my sister and me, and a crib for my brother. In the purple room, our bunk beds were taken apart and put against opposite walls. I had the window side.

Christmas morning, we woke up excited, as all kids do, and rushed to see what Santa had left us. But there was more than just a pile of presents waiting in the living room. On the floor, making a wobbly circuit from the porch door to the tree and back again, was a set of muddy tracks. Santa's stack of cookies was reduced to stray chocolate chips and crumbs, and a carrot stub sat by the plate. Santa came in for his cookies last night, my parents explained, and one of his reindeer must have come inside with him because he smelled the carrot we'd left him! How exciting!

I smiled and played along, but I knew the truth.

Sleeping was never one of my favorite things to do, so I was still awake when my parents quietly moved the wrapped presents from their hiding place and stacked them under the tree. I heard the noise and tiptoed to my door, inching it open just a crack. That's when I saw Mom on her hands and knees, pressing something carefully to the floor. She crawled backwards a few inches and pressed it down again. One by one, she laid down a trail of reindeer hoofprints, crawling backwards across the floor so as not to disturb the fresh paint. Dad stood by the tree, crumbling a piece of the last cookie onto the plate. 

The next morning, after we opened all the presents, I went to throw out the carrot stub. In the trash sat half a potato, cut to look like a reindeer hoof, stained with paint.

It's not real, but it's spectacular

This is the second of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here.

This is not an ornament. I am totally cheating.

For my family, the only acceptable Christmas tree was a real one. Not that we ever trekked out into the woods with an axe and hauled back a fir, of course. We were suburbanites in the 80's, which meant we would go to one of the places that popped up in grocery store parking lots in December, pick out the perfect specimen, and crawl back home with an 8-foot tree strapped to the minivan roof. Every turn on the trip home was exciting, as the tree strained against its twine restraints and the trunk shifted slightly left or right, just barely visible through the rear window if you were looking for it, which of course we kids were.

My husband recently talked me into switching to an artificial tree. A "7.5ft lighted Grand Fir with 400 warm white faceted LED mini-lights", on sale at Target and with excellent reviews online, naturally. It's nice. It fits the space. It doesn't need daily watering, or daily chasing the cats away from the nasty tree water. It doesn't drop needles everywhere. It never has any gaps between the branches, because we can fluff them up however we like. We don't need to saw off the bottom of the trunk to make it level and to let it take up water. There's minimal risk of harassment from cartoon chipmunks stowed away between the branches. Most importantly for my husband, it's pre-lit, which means that he doesn't need to fight with strands of lights, untangling them and stuffing them deep into the tree.

I think I'll always prefer the idea of a real tree, but because my husband does most of the work involved with putting it up and taking it down, I felt that I should back down and let him get us a tree that would be easier for him to deal with (I have a similar policy when it comes to purchasing tools or yard equipment). I'm allergic to Christmas trees, unfortunately. Two years ago when we had a real tree and I decided to do the hard work of jamming light strands into place, I ended up with scratches on my arms from the sticky branches. The scratches quickly puffed up into angry welts and my arms itched for three days despite the Benadryl stupor I placed myself in. I guess you could say we bought an artificial tree for medical reasons.

I miss some things about real trees. One is the annual family outing to select the perfect tree. Doing that as a child, I felt like Charlie Brown or Linus, wandering through the brightly-lit tree lot, looking for just the right tree to bring home. We needed one that wasn't too small or too tall, one that wasn't too skinny or too fat, one that had branches in all the right places and that was pliant and fresh. It was a family quest. Each of us branching out, hunting, bending thin branches to test their flexibility, and shouting to the others when a good candidate was found. It's difficult for me to imagine the annual trek to the garage to drag out the Christmas tree box becoming a treasured tradition for our future children.

More than the hunt, more than anything, I miss the smell of a real tree. All through December, arriving home and opening the front door used to mean walking into Christmas. Even before the decorations or tree were visible, the fir smell would get up into my nose and push familiar buttons, making me feel warm and excited for the holiday. My Christmas spirit, it seems, is tied to my sense of smell more than I realized. Maybe a real fir wreath, placed near the door, will awaken that side of my Christmas spirit again.

The tree is beautiful, though, regardless of its chemical composition. A huge part of its beauty, for me, is our precious collection of Christmas ornaments. We each have our own favorites from our younger days (thanks, Moms, for keeping them for us), and we add to them every year as we move through the world together. Every vacation, every new adventure, beings us a new ornament to tie to those memories so that we can revisit them every year as we decorate the tree. And now that our tree is up, and our dear memories are on display, we've got Christmas in the house. No humbugs for me this year.

December blog project

I've spent a month talking myself into and out of attempting a blog project.

My writing class has been helpful, to a degree, but it's becoming clearer to me that what I really need right now is practice. I can write, sometimes quite well, but I don't do it often enough to feel like I'm a writer, which is where I want to be. Nobody can be a musician if they only play their instrument for three hours a week, and it's silly of me to think that writing is any different.

But I procrastinate. I find other things to do. Not because I don't enjoy writing. I love it. But I have so much self-doubt that I'm afraid to put anything out there. Recipes and home improvement posts are one thing, but the "real" stuff is harder. 

You see, I want to write a book. A real book, on paper. And Kindle, I suppose. I have vague ideas about what I want it to be, and I have some stories I need to build on. But I have no idea how to take my ideas and stories and make them into something people will enjoy reading. I need to find my voice. I need to learn to edit. I need a plan.

I got the idea, last month, to take some of these stories, as elemental as they are in their current form, and get them out of my head and into words. And I could build the stories around my beautiful Christmas ornaments, and make it an advent calendar of stories for the readers of my blog. 

The problem with this is it's already December, and I only have one story written. I can spit out a story a day for the month, but I know that without more time to play with them and edit them, they won't necessarily be very good. If they're not good, I don't want to subject my readers to them. You see my quandary? If I can't do it well, I don't want to do it. But I should do it.

So I will do it.

The stories might be rough around the edges. Some may be written more like a memoir, some more "novel"-ish, and some might just be the bones. I seem to have multiple writing voices, which I need to learn to melt into one clear voice. That's really hard. But I'll do my very best to get one story, as polished as I can manage it, out each day through Christmas. Keep in mind that these are mostly meant to be components in larger stories - they're rough drafts. Bear with me, and maybe, hopefully, enjoy.

Christmas Decorations

I can't believe December is knocking at the front door so soon. It just doesn't get cold enough here in November for it to feel like Santa's reindeer are out training for their big run. I'll admit, though, that it is easier to put up strings of lights when you don't need to be fumbling with thick mittens, so I do appreciate the milder climate.

I was outside last weekend, putting up the lights and giant ornaments on the front porch. It looks almost the same as last year's design, except that I put the white lights on the shrub and the colored lights up on the eaves. I stick to that general arrangement because it's the simplest way to decorate the front of the house without putting in support hooks around the window or door, or running extension cords to light up other trees. Maybe I'll do that eventually, but this is easy and pretty.

I searched in vain for last year's wreath to put up on the middle hook. It refused to be found, so I went to Michaels for some supplies and made myself a new one. It's not bad, but not quite fancy enough. I tried putting some ribbon on it and wasn't happy with it. The result looked like a quick craft project from Michaels, and I was hoping to achieve more of an illusion of actual value. We're going for simplicity this year, folks.

Of course, it's not Christmas without the return of Christmas Duck! I lost the little scarf he wore last year (possibly eloped with the wreath), but I think this new floral arrangement works well.

This year's addition to the lineup (besides the new wreath) is Mr. Moosletoe. First of all, it is a moose. Wearing a garland of holly and bells. This, in itself, is fantastic. But, even more impressively, it is a pun. Therefore, it could not be left at the store. Mr. Moosletoe had to come home with me.

All right, December.

Bring it.

31 in 31

After much thought and scribbling and crossing out, I have made up my list of things to do over the next year. Like last year, I'm posting it to make it public among my friends, so I can be held accountable. I will try my best to post about each achievement as I cross it off the list, and I'll do an update here and there about my progress.

1. Bake Pioneer Woman's famous cinnamon rolls.
2. Bake a cake completely from scratch. (Note to self: ask Sarah for pointers!)
   
3. Update my phone and address book, transfer to memory of home phone and cell phone. I'm tired of having to search my Gmail archives to find someone's most recent address or phone number.
   
4. Get us off mailing lists and reduce junk mail.
5. Try a CSA again. Research it better, get recommendations.
   
6. Grow food - more than tomatoes and herbs. Maybe peppers?
7. Read 50 books.
8. Blog regularly.
9. Take my vitamins.
10. Email (and call) my friends more.
11. Put together an emergency kit for the car.
12. Take a class. Any class.
13. Lose some weight.
14. Work on embroidery to figure out if I like it.
15. Stay hydrated.
16. Wear moisturizer.
17. Participate in Thing-a-Day. It'll be incomplete because of the February cruise, but that's ok.
18. See the stars from the cruise ship.
19. Organize all my printed and photocopied recipes.
20. Make cookies that aren't for Christmas.
21. Impress them at my new job and get a good review and/or raise.
22. Paint living and dining rooms.
23. Read Darwin's Origin of Species.
24. Make a birthday list so I stop relying on Facebook to tell me.
25. Set up a safe deposit box for our important papers.
26. Try curling. Yes, the sport. Yes, it IS a sport.
27. Get my sewing machine out of the box, plug it in, and stitch something. Anything.
28. See the National Christmas Tree in DC. I've wanted to since I got here and haven't managed yet.
29. Make bagels from scratch.

The last two aren't for sharing, because it's not stuff I'll be posting about. Hope nobody minds!

Christmas Decorations - A Little Late

I didn't have access to my own computer for a while, so I couldn't post any pictures, which means that I completely forgot to write a post about my Christmas decorations this year. I hope it's not too late to share them with you.

I decided I wanted some giant ornaments for the outside decorations this year, even though we don't have a convenient tree to put them in. I planned to hang them from the porch, along with some green garland and lights. Home Depot had a pretty sad selection by the time I got there to buy some - the glitter was missing from many of them, and some were dented. They weren't individually packaged, just all jumbled in a big cardboard box. Luckily Costco came through for me - I found a set of 6 big ornaments for about $20, and they're pretty!

I spaced them out evenly and hung them from little white cup-hooks, which will stay there for future years' decorations. Dave was kind enough to climb up with a drill and help me get those installed. I strung simple white lights along the hooks, and skipped the fake spruce garland because I was missing about 2 feet of length and I didn't feel like going out to buy more. The hydrangea bush on the right also got some white lights draped in it. None of my nighttime pictures turned out at all, so you'll have to use some imagination.

I made this wreath last year, so it went back up on the center post, since the front door has a big window in it and doesn't lend itself well to Christmas decorations. Look at the giant ornaments! Aren't they great?

Oh, and our friend Solar Duck got dressed up for Christmas too. So dapper and festive!

That's it for the outdoor decorations. I have grand hopes for the future, with more lights strung across the front of the house, and maybe "candles" for the windows, but we'll see how much work (and money) we're actually willing to put into decorating.

We got our tree up and decorated right after Thanksgiving. I bought an awesome Yoda tree topper this year, so we could stop arguing over whether an angel or a star should top the tree, but his LED lightsaber was broken, so I had to return him. I'm a little bummed about that, because I was looking forward to our new nerdy tradition. So this year, the angel won out, and while she looks headless in this picture, I assure you she isn't. The bright colored lights are bubble lights(!!!), which I bought last year and didn't use. They're a throwback to my childhood and while they're much bigger than the ones I'm used to, they still make mesmerizing bubbles. I'm not sure if it looks tacky to have them on there when the tree is already pre-lit with white LEDs, but I really wanted them this year, so we did it anyway. Go, tacky!

The cats , especially Horton, spent a lot of time under the tree impersonating presents! We didn't hang out much in that room, though, because our TV and usable fireplace are downstairs. We put up a small tree where we always spend our evenings, and we put our stockings up by the fire.

Mom gave me her wintery teddy bear collection, and I sat them along the mantel for some added cuteness.

I enjoyed having all this stuff up for a month - it helped make things feel more Christmassy even without the snow outside. I took it all down today, taking advantage of the almost-70-degree weather. In Montreal, we leave that crap up outside until April because it's too cold to contemplate wrestling with it wearing huge mittens!

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Far from home, far from the family traditions that make Christmas a comfortable and predictable holiday, and far from the snowy Montreal winters, it's always hard for me to find the right state of mind to enjoy the holidays here. But we're building our own traditions and finding our own comforts in Christmas, and I'll get there.

I miss the chaos of the family around Grandmaman's table, and the ceramic Santa boot filled with toothpicks for the olive-and-pickle plate that was always my job to fill. I miss the men of the family taking turns and stepping up to fill the fake scratchy beard and old Santa suit that Grandpapa wore to hand out presents. Even when we were all too old for Santa, an uncle or cousin would dress up and sit by the tree and call out the names on the gift tags, adding in a Ho Ho Ho here and there for good measure. I remember the Christmas decorations that would come out of the tissue paper every year - the ceramic angel in the green dress, holding the candle with the world's tiniest light bulb at the tip, and the plastic houses of the Christmas Village, with their warmly-lit yellow cellophane windows.

That's gone now, but I know it lives in the memory of all my cousins as vividly as it does in mine. One cousin has the Santa suit, and wore it to a party this year, being very careful not to damage it, because he knows it will be used in the next generation of Christmases, as the cousins all grow up and have our own families. I'm homesick, but I'm homesick for the past, which I can't have back.

This year, my husband and I had a wonderful Christmas Eve, with a crackling fire, lap blankets made of purring cats, and It's a Wonderful Life on TV (again). Snuggled with my man by the fireplace, laughing at Horton fighting with the shredded wrapping paper, I managed to find the Christmas spirit I'd been missing. We played some old-fashioned Quebec Christmas music, the kind I used to cringe away from with embarrassment when Mom played it, but secretly have always loved. We had a great meal and exchanged presents on Christmas Eve, making it our own little Reveillon, even though we didn't have the huge chaotic family to go along with it.

We'll be at my in-laws today, enjoying their family traditions and their welcoming warmth, and it's going to be a merry Christmas. It's my nephew's very first Christmas, and I can't wait to find out, thirty years from now, what little things he will remember about the family Christmases we'll be sharing, and what he will want to carry on with his own family.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Prize Shortbread Cookies

I'm not sure which prize they won, who won it, or when, but this is my family's Best Christmas Cookie. Mom made these every year, even when she was exhausted and threatened not to, because we all love them so much.

Prize Shortbread
(From Five Roses Flour "A Guide to Good Cooking")

2 cups flour
1 cup soft butter
1/2 cup icing sugar
1 egg yolk
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp nutmeg*
*Freshly grated nutmeg is so much better, but regular ground nutmeg from the spice aisle will be ok.

The recipe in this book is very clear about using a wooden spoon, and I don't know why. I've never dared to try a plastic spoon or (gasp) my Kitchenaid mixer, because I feel I should obey the book. So, start by finding a wooden spoon.

Stir sugar and egg yolk into the soft butter, then stir in salt and nutmeg. Add the flour, a quarter cup at a time, until the batter is too hard to stir with the spoon. I usually hit this point at about 3.5 cups. Dump the batter out onto a floured counter and knead gently while adding more flour to the dough by hand. Keep drawing flour in by kneading until the dough just begins to crack*. Roll the dough out with a floured rolling pin to about a quarter-inch thickness and cut into shapes with cookie cutters. Decorate with sprinkles or colored sugar if you want to. Bake at 350F for 10 minutes on an ungreased cookie sheet. Look for the edges to start browning the tiniest bit - that's when they're done.

Move them to a cooling rack immediately, but be careful, they are very fragile. Pushing them off with a spatula is usually better than trying to get anything under them on the cookie sheet.

This recipe will get you about 3 dozen cookies, but it depends on how big a cutter you're using.

These will fall apart in your mouth and taste like buttery heaven.

*It has just occurred to me that I should have taken a picture of this step, because what the heck does "beginning to crack" mean to someone who hasn't done this before? It shouldn't be so wet that it sticks to everything, but it shouldn't be so dry that it flakes as you roll it. I'll take pictures next time and add them!

Merry Christmas!

Here is the result of all my wrapping!


It really is greater to give than to receive - I can't wait to see the reactions to some of these presents. Looking forward to hauling half of these to the in-laws later today, and the rest to Montreal tomorrow!

I've got my coffee (the good stuff - Starbucks Verona), my cats, and my sleeping husband... I'm chatting with my bro online and watching the snowflakes outside. This is a great Christmas morning. I'm off to the kitchen to make breakfast in hopes that the smell of bacon will wake my sleeping man. Because if it doesn't, I'm just eating all the bacon. :)

Merry Christmas!

Mexican Wedding Cookies

My Christmas gift to both of my grandmothers this year will be tins of homemade cookies. They keep telling me they don't want or need anything, but everyone likes cookies. Mom told me that Grandmaman's favorite cookies are pecan cookies, so I did a little hunting for a good recipe online, and came up with these "wedding cookies". They're traditionally an almond-based cookie, but I substituted toasted pecans and they turned out wonderfully. I'm transcribing this recipe into my book immediately so I don't lose it!

Mexican Wedding Cookies (with Pecans)

1 cup butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp cold water
2 cups flour
1 cup crushed toasted pecans
powdered sugar for dusting

Toast the pecans by putting them in a single layer on a cookie sheet or pie pan, and baking at 350 for 8 minutes, stirring them at the halfway point. Put them in a large ziplock bag and crush them with a rolling pin, or do what I did and put them in a cup and smash them with the end of my smallest metal measuring cup. I guess you could dump them in a food processor, if you have one of those. You want them ground pretty fine but with bits big enough to give a crunch.

Cream butter and granulated sugar, add vanilla and water and mix well. Add the nuts and flour, mix until blended. Chill 30 min in the fridge.
Preheat oven to 350F.

Roll dough into balls and then squeeze into crescents (you can leave them as balls if you want) and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 15-20 minutes at 350, then move to a rack to cool. When cool, dip the tops in a bowl of powdered sugar. This makes about 4 dozen cookies.

And they're so cute!



I absolutely loved these. I want to make a second batch for myself but I'm getting tired of all the baking, and I also know I'll be eating a ton in the next week, with the special Christmas Eve dinner I'm making, Christmas dinner with the in-laws and then with my Mom... so I'll skip the cookies for now. But I'll be baking these again in the near future, I think.

Christmas decorating contest at work

My hospital gives out annual prizes for the best-decorated department, and for the best-decorated department door. It's not much, maybe $50 to spend on a pizza party for the department, but it's still a ton of fun to waste a day or two gluing sparkles to your door instead of working. Everyone gets really into it, gluing all kinds of things to their doors - last year the blood bank had a cardboard chimney on the door with stuffed Santa legs sticking out. This year, the Transport department is allegedly showing off a 3-D carousel with flamingoes, bears, and penguins... I have not yet confirmed this rumor but I'll head down there Monday to see it with my own eyes.

The deadline was getting close and nobody was feeling into it this year, so I went to the bosslady with a cute and lame idea, and she told me to go for it. She gave me the bottom half of the door, because she wanted the top half to do something else she was thinking about. I bought a giant roll of shiny silver wrapping paper to wrap the entire door, so we could have a festive base to work from. That was the hardest part because you really need two people, preferably tall people, to hold up the paper and tape it in place - luckily there are some tall people on evening shift who I recruited through begging. Then I taped my wonderfully lame idea in place and called it a night. Actually, the taping took me about two hours. I kept poking my head into the blood bank to ask if I was needed for real work, but they kept telling me all was well, so I kept taping.

Here's the door:

See how I used the hospital's name for a subtle kiss-up effect? That's how you get points with the judges! Either make them go "awww" or poke them in their hospital pride. Like I said, cute and lame. I like it. Cutting out those letters was a ridiculous pain, and I had to stick them on by putting tiny little rolls of tape on their backs, so the tape wouldn't show. The big letters are cardboard cut outs, and I wrapped them with another metallic paper.

On top the writing says "we dedicate our work to the men and women of our armed forces and their families." Santa later acquired a small American flag to hold.

It's not much, but it was fun to do.

Christmas Prep 2010, Part 2

We got the outside lights up last weekend and I never got around to taking a picture until tonight. So here you go:

Of course, I picked a cold and windy day to stand outside on a ladder and fight with tangled strands of LEDs, because I'm a sucker for punishment. There were a few hooks up already, but after hooking the lights up they seemed to sag too far down, so I added a few of those removable 3M hooks to hold the strands up in the middle. I think the previous owners used velcro to put their decorations and/or lights up, because there are small velcro squares stuck around the front bay window and along the roof of the porch. Maybe we'll look into that for next year - it would be a good way to put a garland around the window. But is velcro strong enough to hold lights up?

I used LEDs for the little shrub, because it's so dried out I was afraid of starting a fire if I used regular bulbs. The big old-fashioned lights went along the porch roof. I considered winding them around the two supporting posts too, but it got complicated and the strands were just a little bit too short to do it right, so instead I just doubled back and ended up with two strands along the edge.

Of course, that was when I discovered that the extension cord we had was the kind with only one outlet at the end, and I had two strands of lights that needed plugging. Thank you, Target, for having all your outdoor extension cords on clearance! I picked one up for $6 and it has three spots at the end. So next year I can add even more lights! I don't think I'll ever create a LED wonderland in the front yard like some others in the neighborhood, but I would like to put more effort in next year. Because Christmas lights are just so pretty.

Christmas Prep 2010, Part 1

Today was Christmas tree day!

I finally resigned myself to the reasonable and sensible option of an artificial Christmas tree, and we bought one this morning at Target. I love real trees because that's what I grew up with. But with the inevitable vicious needles stabbing me in the feet for three months after Christmas no matter how much I vacuum, the need to crawl underneath the branches to water it, keeping the cats from drinking the tree water, and the giant welts on my hands and arms each year from my evergreen allergy, it made sense to make the switch.

We found a 7.5ft fir tree, pre-lit with white LEDs, for a pretty good price. There was one I liked a little more at Lowe's but it didn't seem like the extra $100 was really worth it, so this one is what we came home with. Those things are really expensive! Happily, it assembled really easily, unlike some other artificial trees I've seen. It came in three parts with the branches all folded up on hinges, so you just pop the three pieces together and then drop the branches and start fluffing them up so they look good. That part was rather tedious, but the result was a good-looking tree.

Out came the red unbreakable ornaments (with three cats, glass ornaments are asking for trouble) and the angel tree-topper. We then started adding all our special ornaments. I collect ornaments when we travel, so we've got dozens now from all our adventures, and I love having them on the tree to look at and spark so many happy and funny memories. Some are too fragile for me to feel comfortable displaying on a tree the cats might climb, so I'll need to find a shelf and an ornament display tree for next year, so they can finally come out of their bubble wrap.

Here's the tree:I'm really happy with how it looks. The tree skirt is adorable, but usually has a cat on it. Whether that adds or detracts from its adorability is up for debate and depends on whether the cat is attacking ornaments. Speaking of ornaments, here's a close-up:

In this one you can see the mini-cowbell from Switzerland on the bottom left, Big Ben a little ways above it, Dutch clogs from Amsterdam at the top, and two corks - the one on the left is from a bottle of wine we shared in Rome, and the champagne cork at the bottom is from the day Dave proposed, in Montreal. See what I mean about the memories? Almost every ornament has a story, and that makes the tree so special to me. I wish I could tell them all, but people get bored.

The problem with the tree is that we couldn't put it in the family room where we normally watch TV, because it wouldn't fit. So we needed another tree. Luckily we had a mini-tree from last year, and we decked it out with bells and bows and sat it near the TV so we can feel Christmassy while we lie on the couch.


Tomorrow we will tackle the outdoor decorating. We have big plans!

Christmas Cookie Extravaganza!

Today was Cookie Day 2010. An event of near-epic proportions. A day which leaves us covered in flour and buzzing from the sugar high.

We get together at my mother-in-law's place in December every year so we ladies can bake cookies while the menfolk wrestle with the assembly of the Christmas tree. This year there may have been some actual wrestling with the strings of lights, because I heard some muffled cursing and then some muffled electrical engineering brainstorming to try and get them to work. They figured it out, though, because in the end there was a fabulous decorated (and lit) tree to admire over eggnog and cookies. And we ended up with a LOT of cookies!


We started by making the oatmeal chocolate chip craisin cookies I've already talked about. There is debate among us whether they should rightfully be allowed as Christmas cookies, but since everyone loves them we definitely had to make them. After that, we got down to the difficult one - the shortbread cookies. The recipe is a very old one from a Five Roses cookbook my Mom's probably had since before I was born. We always made them for Christmas, with Mom doing the dirty work of mixing and rolling and cutting, and us kids going wild with sprinkles and colored sugar. I always end up in the "Mom" role when we make them on cookie day - they say it's because I'm better at rolling them out, but I suspect they just want to play with sprinkles. :)

The first batch, though, didn't turn out quite right. The recipe instructs the baker to knead in flour until the dough "just begins to crack". Well, I learned tonight that it is a damn fine line between "beginning to crack" and "falling apart into cookie dust". Some of the first batch was salvaged and we were able to cut out shapes with the cutters, but after one cookie sheet's worth I just rolled the remaining dough into lumps and added sprinkles and hoped they'd taste better than they looked. This was the result:


Cookie fail! They taste ok, so it's not a complete loss, but considering how pretty these cookies are when we do them right, I was frustrated with myself for misjudging the flour. I started over with a second batch and they were perfect. I think I need to make these more than once a year so I can remember what "just beginning to crack" looks like.

The third cookie of the night was the peanut blossoms. I'm not a huge peanut butter fan but everyone else loves them, and there would be a riot if we skipped these. My favorite part about these cookies is eating the Hershey's Kisses that are left over.