Happy Holidays!

To all those who celebrate Christmas, have a very merry one!

The Disaster that Wasn't: Almond and Chocolate Ganache Thumbprints

I remember as a kid going to the grocery store and begging for a "thumbprint" cookie. These cookies were shortbread thumbprints with chocolate ganache, and they were amazing. However, no piece of shortbread was ever quite like those from the thumbprints.

Recently I discovered in Joy of Cooking Christmas Cookies that they have a thumbprint recipe and the secret is: it's almond shortbread. The recipe in Joy of Cooking Christmas Cookies is a lowfat version (supposedly), but it still tastes great!

There is one problem with the Joy of Cooking Christmas Cookies recipe: it does not hold its shape. Although they looked good when they went into the oven...

Make them into balls and then make a deep knuckle-print in them.

They don't come out looking right unless, about 6 minutes in, you re-print them with a small spoon. When I noticed, I totally freaked out, but they turned out fine.

Baking complete. Now for Ganache!

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups (7.5 oz) all purpose flour
• 1/3 cup (1.5 oz) cornstarch
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3 1.2 tablespoons (1.75 oz) unsalted butter, softened
• 3 tablespoons canola oil
• 1 tablespoon light corn syrop
• 1/2 cup (3.5 oz) sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 3/4 teaspoon almond extract

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Stir together flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt with a fork or wire whisk
3. Beat together with a fork (or an electric mixer) butter, canola oil, corn syrup, sugar, egg, vanilla extract, and almond extract.
4. Combine wet and try indgredients and beat until smooth.
5. Slightly oil hands and pull of chestnut-sized bits of dough and roll them into balls. Place the balls on a non-stick cookie sheet.
6. Using your thumb or a knuckle, create a deep well in the center of each ball.
7. Bake for 5-6 minutes.
8. Take the cookie sheet out of the oven and redo the indents with a small spoon or similar device.
9. Replace the cookie sheet into the oven until cookies are just barely tinged with brown around the edges.
10. Take out the baking sheet. Let it sit for 1-2 minutes and then transfer the cookies to a baking sheet to cool.

Then Servia made chocolate ganache. The recipe is easy. The ganache will harden-- don't worry. It took much longer than the recipe suggested, but we let them sit overnight and they were great.

Ganache in process: Step 4.

Ingredients

• 6 oz semisweet baking chocolate
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon light corn syrop
• 2 tablespoons heavy whipping cream

Directions

1. Take two saucepans (one which will fit inside the other) or a saucepan and a heat-proof bowl. Fill the larger saucepan with water and bring the water to a slow simmer
2. Put the smaller saucepan (or bowl) into the larger one (face up) so that it heats up in the water.
3. Melt the chocolate in the inner saucepan.
4. Add the butter, corn syrop, and whipping cream.
5. Stir until the ingredients until they create a silky smooth ganach.
6. Using a spoon, fill each thumbprint with 1 teaspoon of ganache.
7. Let sit to to dry until the ganache is hard to the touch-- at least 1.5 hours, but may take more.

These cookies are amazing. Don't eat too many!

Updates 12/27/10: some pictures of the final stages of the cookies.

Servia fills the indentation with chocolate ganache.

A perfect thumbprint.

The Cookies.

The cookies were lovely, and we gave them away as gifts at Christmas.

Wrapped and ready.

Christmas Traditions of the Servii, Part 2

For the second part installment on my family's Christmas traditions, I thought I would talk about greenery.

The Christmas Tree

As long as I can remember, my family has bought a live tree. By "live" I am not just distinguishing it from a fake tree, but also from a cut tree: our Christmas trees have roots and come in a pot. We then plant them in our front yard and have quite a wonderful thicket of Christmas trees from various years. Some of them are now well over 20 feet high.

Redwoods, of course, are always preferable as trees. However, with a live tree, one has to be concerned with how early one buys the tree, how long can it survive in the pot, how successfully will it be able to hang ornaments, etc. There is usually a small selection of live Christmas trees; it cannot hold a candle to the selection for cut trees. For this reason, the Servii have come to love our trees in all shapes and sizes. We have had scrawny, sparse, short, and bent Christmas trees over the years. One year, the trees were so small that we had a copse of three trees together. This year we got a reasonably-sized tree, but it was a ceder rather than a more traditional redwood. It seems pretty happy inside. Once the holidays are over, we will put it on the porch and plant it in the spring.

The Ceder

Decorative Greens

My family loves the look of greenery and the smell of pine. We always have lots of greenery around the house: real pine on the table and around the front door, lighted fake greens on the stairs, a wreath or two (one being the traditional seat of the Christmas mice, which I will explain in the next installment), and sometimes other greenery in various places.

Every year, there is some kind of problem with the real pine that comes for around the door. Even switching companies each year, there is always some kind of mix up. In past years it has been delivered to the wrong house, not shown up at all, been delivered a few weeks early, arrived on Christmas eve (leaving almost no time to put it up), etc, etc. This year, we changed companies again. The first set arrived only five days after we ordered it-- well over a month early-- even though there was a specific request for delay on the order (as to keep the greens fresh). After a long fight with the company, we resorted to ordering the next batch from a new company. They arrived on time (yesterday), but put up the "delivered" notice a hour before they actually came, making us think that they had, once again, been delivered to the wrong house. After a long exchange with FedEx, the package arrived and all was well.

I realize that the greenery saga is not as funny in writing as it if one experiences it year-after-year. My apologies. Anyway, we are going to (hopefully) put the boughs around the door tonight. Wish us luck!

 Lighted fake greens on the stairs.

Real greens above the fireplace [1].

 Endnotes

1. There are only three of us, but we thought that it looked better with four stockings so we took a pretty one I was given a few years back and put it up as decoration.

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Picture Updates for the Holiday Recipes (and Reviews), Part III

The Gỏi Cuốn rolls were a smash hit at the Christmas party last night! I made them correctly with white rice and cilantro and cut them in half so they were finger-food size. A number of people asked me for the recipe. I felt pretty awesome.

The bed of spinach and rice on the rice wrapper.

Add the cilantro and the carrots.

Add the cucumber, fold in the edges, and roll.

The first few rolls on the platter.

Fairly easy to make and an absolute hit. I highly recommend them.

I also made vanilla shortbread the other night, which we are going to dip in chocolate. It's a very simple recipe. We got real vanilla beans-- my favorite-- from Costco. When I was a little kid, I always shied away from things with vanilla bean in them because I thought the little black specs looked like-- and possibly were-- bugs legs. In reality, vanilla bean lends a wonderful, strong vanilla flavor, and makes your dishes look very fancy. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 vanilla bean

Directions

1. Cream sugar and butter together. Mix until fluffy.

3. Add flour and cornstarch. Mix until it becomes a smooth dough.

4. Add vanilla extract. Slice open the vanilla bean and scrape out the black granuals from within and add them to the dough. Mix until they are distributed through.

A vanilla bean. Slice open and scrape.

5. Either make into a log and wrap in wax paper to put in the refrigerator or make into walnut-sized drops and bake for 20-23 minutes at 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

Update 12/23/10: No idea why I said 450 degrees-- the cookies should actually be baked at 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, I made them today so I took some pictures:

I only made half the log because I might want to make some more later, so I cut half into just under 1/4 inch cookies, and rolled the rest in wax paper and put it back in the refrigerator. 

Half the log returns to the fridge.

I put these in for almost 28 minutes. The edges should change slightly in color, but the color of the cookie will not change very much.

Shortbread, just out of the oven

As a good omen for the holidays, after several days of rain, there was a beautiful double rainbow yesterday.

Christmas Traditions of the Servii, Part 1

For these posts, I will be referring to my family as the Servii (given that I have taken the name Sulpicia, daughter of Servius). I will also give my mother the name Servia. I realize that this is incorrect in the practice of Roman naming [1], but it is an easy convention.

There are a multitude of family traditions among the Servii. I thought I would highlight a few of them as they come to mind. We are not religious-- not at all-- so the holiday is more about celebrating our friends and family and the quirky traditions that have evolved.

Christmas Tags

When I was a child, my family wrote normal Christmas tags likes everyone else. Things were from my parents, my grandparents, Santa, etc. Gifts to friends were from the family or individual members of the family. We have a few Jewish friends who come over for Christmas dinner, so my dad started making their gifts "from Santa" as a mild joke. But one Christmas, the tags took a stranger turn.

There was a woman writer, whom I will call Julia, who worked with my father for many years and spent a lot of time with our family. As with many stories or descriptions from my youth, I am not entirely sure whether it has been influenced by stray bits from the passage of time that seem like they have become part of the memory, or whether this is exaggerated, but I will describe her to the best of my ability. As I remember Julia, she was a tall Southern vixen; she was long and thin with a mane of curly hair dyed an artificial red. She wore all black: a black top, skinny black jeans, and high-healed black boots which she accented with a royal attitude, a sharp wit, and a partiality for the more melancholy of philosophers like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. I always really liked her. For all of her airs, she was very sweet to me, but even from my skewed perspective I could tell she was an eccentric.

On Christmas when I was eight, Julia came over for dinner, as usual. I remember that my father tagged her gift "From Jesus Christ Himself," in order to amuse her. From then on, as I recall, tags got stranger and stranger. Now, most of my gifts come from absurd images such as "Reindeer nose icicles" and "Russian-leg handbag cream." I have, in past years, tried to outdo my father, but I shy away from gross or disturbing thoughts more than he does so I cannot entirely compete. Most of mine make a little to much sense as well, such as my mom is receiving a very large, poorly wrapped gift from "the drunken elves who wrapped it."

Happy holidays, everyone!

Endnotes

1. In traditional Patrician Roman naming, a male is endowed with three names: a praenoman (which is one of about 20 common names such as Marcus or Gaius), a gentilicium (the name of the gens-- much like a modern last name), and the cognomen which specified the part of the gens. My favorite cognomen is Cicero, which means "chickpea" and was bestowed upon this part of the gens because their noses supposedly resembled chickpeas. Women, even patrician women, only had two names. They had the female version of gentilicium and this was followed by the genitive (and sometimes diminutive) of their father's (and later their husband's) cognomen. For more Roman naming practices, see the wikipedia page on the subject.

Picture Updates for Holiday Recipes (and Reviews), Part II

I tried the Gỏi Cuốn tonight that I talked about in "Touch at Your Own Risk" and updated in the first installment of "Picture Updates for Holiday Recipes (and Reviews)". We are bringing some to a party tomorrow. Here is the review:

They are great! I love salad rolls, so I actually like them plain (we made them with brown rice instead of white rice, so they taste a little more interesting, but I totally forgot the cilantro when I made them). I highly highly recommend them. Also, the peanut sauce is fabulous. I am including the recipe below. I did not really like the spicy sauce, which is funny because I love spice. It's not too hot, it's just not interesting enough. The peanut sauce had a fuller body and more interesting flavors.

Sweet Peanut Sauce from MYOTG. Amazing.

Ingredients

4 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)
1 tablespoon molasses
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
2 teaspoons sesame oil
20 drops hot sauce, habenero
1/8 teaspoon black pepper.

Directions

Whisk together all the ingredients until a relatively homogeneous mixture (with the exception of the peanut pieces if you are using crunchy peanut butter).

I also made the dough for another batch of Icebox Cookies (the cookies I talked about in "Holiday Spirit is all about Cookies").
After Step 3:

Wet ingredients, beaten fluffy by hand.

 After Step 5:

The dough, ready for refrigeration.

 After Step 6:

Ready to go into the freezer.

I will be making these cookies at some point during the Christmas holidays. It's nice to know that I have something I can have ready in 30 minutes.

Picture Updates for Holiday Recipes (and Reviews)

Tonight I made the two sauces for the Gỏi Cuốn (from "Touch at Your Own Risk") and the blond brownies (from "How Early is Too Early for Holiday Cheer").

First, the Gỏi Cuốn:
The Spicy Sauce, with red chillies:

Spicy Sauce with seeds left in for extra heat.

The Sweet Peanut Sauce (using chunky peanut butter):

Peanut Sauce may look funny, but tastes great!

Then, the blond brownies:
Also, update, the blond brownies are excellent! They are very rich and much as I remember them as a child. Note: I used semi-sweet chocolate chips. This is great for dark chocolate and traditional chocolate chip cookie lovers. However, for those with a serious sweet tooth, substitute milk chocolate chips.

After Step 5:

The "wet" ingredients.

After Step 10:

Into the pan, hoping the aluminum foil works!

After Step 13:

Once it came out, cooked through.

After Step 13:

The foil pealed off easily once they cooled.

More Coming Soon!

Holiday Spirit is all about Cookies

More than ever, this year, holiday spirit seems to be tied to cookies. My perspective may be skewed slightly by the websites that I read, many of which are cooking blogs, as well as a recurring theme of trying to make the holidays healthier by either modifying cookie recipes or abstaining from cookies on Sparkpeople.com. Consequently, I recently made a batch of my first holiday sugar cookies and brought them to my class. As it turns out, homemade sugar cookies (in combination with the majority of the class hardly sleeping the previous night) can make grammar really exciting! Who would have thought.

I used the icebox sugar cookie recipe in the Joy of Cooking Christmas Cookies (with very slight modifications, found here) and the students loved it (they were shocked the the cookies were homemade). They finished every last one.

Warning: the cooking time and the active preparation do not take a long time, but there is at least 3.5 hours worth of waiting involved. Plan accordingly.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups (7.5 ounces) all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup (5.25 ounces) unsalted butter.
• 2/3 cup (4.75 ounces) sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 teaspoons vanilla

Directions:

1. Thoroughly stir together and set aside the flour, baking powder, and salt.
2. Cream the butter and sugar and beat until fluffy. (The recipe says with an electric mixer and it says to soften the butter. I took the butter straight out of the refrigerator, chopped it into small pieces put it in and made it fluffy by hand with a fork. Either way works).
3. Add to the creamed butter and sugar mixture the egg and vanilla. Continue beating until these are incorporated.
4. Mix in the flour mixture until just smoothly incorporated.
5. Cover and refrigerate until slightly firm, 20-30 minutes.
6. Upon removing from the refrigerator, place the dough on a long sheet of wax paper. With lightly oiled hands, shape into an even, 11-inch long log. Roll up the wax paper and twist the end to prevent unrolling.
7. Place on a tray and put in the freezer until completely frozen. You can also leave the log in the freezer for up to three weeks, but if you are going to do this, wrap the log in an airtight bag before placing it in the freezer.
8. To bake, preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Lightly grease the cookie sheets or use a non-stick baking sheet.
9. Carefully peel the wax-paper off the log and cut into 1/8-1/4 of an inch slices, immediately transferring them to the cookie sheet and spacing about 2 inches apart.
10. Decorate the cookies with colored crystal sugar.
11. Bake the cookies on the upper oven rack for 7-10 minutes (note:: I experimentally verified that they do not work out so well in a toaster oven-- they puff up and burn).
12. When the cookies are golden all over, remove them from the oven. Transfer the cookies to wire racks to cool.
13. NOTE: these cookies do not taste good warm. I don't know why. They taste much better when fully cooled. They can also be stored, airtight, for up to 3 weeks.

 

I thought I would also share some other Christmas cookie fun for the sake of your holiday cheer. Two recipes one for sugar cookies and one for "butter cookies" from My Year on the Grill. One Perfect Bite also did a holiday cookie roundup.

My mom also sent me this cute piece by a "dough artist" the other day. I have to say, as a kid, I was always disappointed watching the ball drop on TV. The ball dropping depicted by this artist is much more along the lines of what I expected.

Happy Holidays, everyone!