Archives for posts with tag: baking

Christmas Cookies Redux, Part Two

December 18, 2025 //
7

I thought about the kitchen. I wrote about the kitchen. I tried to avoid thinking about the kitchen. And then I went down to the kitchen.

Onyx followed me down, hoping that I would open a can of cat food at 4:20 PM. Not happening. I tell her it isn’t time. I tell her she has to wait. I don’t know how much of this she understands, but after watching me for a few minutes she disappears up the stairs. I turn on the oven for a commercial frozen turkey pot pie for dinner: when I am doing production baking I don’t cook meals — it will be muffins for breakfast, quesadillas or roasted yams or a bagel with peanut butter for lunch and whatever I can find for dinner for the next few days.

I put the glass bowl of molasses, butter and sugar back into the microwave. I just set it in there to get it out of the way while I sift flour. Three and a half cups into a metal bowl that held flour earlier in the day. When I bake more than one thing in a day I reuse cups and bowls without washing them whenever I can: a cup that only contained flour can be used for flour again; a teaspoon that has only measured dry ingredients can be used for more of them, sometimes with a quick wipe with a towel to remove dark-colored coffee or cocoa powder or cloves. I see that I will have to get flour soon, but I have enough to finish this recipe. The half and half I prefer in coffee has gone blinky, but I do not want to go to the health food store tonight — I want to finish this dough. I’ll open a can of evaporated milk tomorrow morning because I will have coffee long before the store is open.

I measure the flour, rescuing spilled flour from the counter and cutting board when I can to make up the last half cup. I have left measuring spoons out, so I measure a teaspoon of soda and eyeball the salt. Then I turn to spices: cinnamon, ginger. The nutmeg is on the counter where I have left it. Hmm. Pie spice. What’s in it? A quick read of the label reveals cinnamon, vanilla sugar, ginger, nutmeg, mace, cloves and fennel? None of those things will hurt the spicy molasses dough. Neither will the white pepper I just bought for pfefferneusse. I measure a scant teaspoon of cinnamon, a generous teaspoon of ginger and a level teaspoon of pie spice and whisk them into the flour mixture. I tap the last flour out of the measuring cups. Then I pour the molasses mixture into the flour and start stirring and folding with a rubber scraper. I scrape the dregs of molasses from a measuring cup and from the Pyrex bowl into the forming dough.

The dough turns a lovely mahogany color and smells spicy. Yum. It is very soft, but it will firm up some from chilling. This is the hardest dough I work with at Christmas (Molasses is like that, especially if you want thin, crisp cookies without excess flour). I will make use of both a chilled marble slab and a silicone mat and will probably do some unChristian swearing the day I roll out the ginger cookies. Into a bag goes the dough, still warm, but destined for the refrigerator.

I am done with doughs for the day. Getting three done is pretty good. I might have done the fourth except for the flour shortage. One result of having a smaller kitchen than my mother had is that I can’t stockpile ten or fifteen pounds of flour and fifteen pounds of sugar — there is nowhere to store them — so I have to shop more frequently. I will get more flour and a carton of eggs tomorrow. I have enough molasses to make another half batch of ginger dough, plenty of brown sugar and a big bottle of vanilla, at least three forms of ginger, pounds of butter in the freezer. I have the ingredients for another batch of cocoa shortbread and for more maple butter cookies.

Since I scraped all of the flour I could into the half cup measuring cup for the ginger dough I am able to run a damp dish cloth over the cutting board and counter to clear the rest. I wipe the flour container and close the sifter into its box. I gather the glass bowl and the metal bowl and the glass measuring cup and put them in my dishpan with detergent and hot water. I wash the pasta bowl to get it out of the way, put a cookbook away. I won’t clean the floor until I am through messing with flour several days hence.

I am thorough about getting all of the ingredients out of mixing bowls and measuring cups, off whisks and scrapers. This is respectful of the ingredients and it also makes the bowls, cups and utensils easier to clean: they are not swimming in molasses and butter or crusted with sugar. When I can no longer get more out of a bowl with an implement I use my index finger and get a lovely taste of a finished dough. Part of me wants to eat spoonfuls of it, but these stolen tastes are enough to assure me that I have made good stuff. I wash my hands thoroughly and frequently and dry them between uses so I can’t really explain the floury fingerprints on the microwave. I wipe them off.

I pop open the can of food that Onyx craves, mash it up and take it upstairs to her. Then I take my pot pie out of the oven. She will get some of that, too, but not until I am done. Onyx comes back down to get me — she wants company while she eats. I turn off the oven, the heat and the lights downstairs and go upstairs where I eat, serve the cat a torn up cube of turkey, and compose this post while listening to rain fall on the roof.

To be continued.

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Categories Christmas baking, cookies, seasonal recipes

Christmas Cookies Redux, Part One

December 18, 2025 //
0

I am avoiding my kitchen at the moment.

This is my first Christmas in my own house in a December where I have misplaced my house keys, contracted a virus, hired men to bring pallets into my garage and re-stack boxes and furniture to keep them from flood damage from what someone dubbed “the Godzilla of atmospheric rivers,” and then hired them again to bring over sandbags when I noticed puddling on my driveway. I have wondered why the curbs are not higher and why there is no drain in the driveway. Also, my oven seems to be running low after performing well at Thanksgiving, just in time for baking season.

This morning I began mixing up Christmas cookie doughs, softening sticks of unsalted butter in the microwave, measuring granulated sugar and cocoa powder, sifting flour, adding espresso powder and vanilla. The aromas made me happy. I didn’t make Christmas cookies in 2023 when I was taking care of my mother and I didn’t make them in 2024 when I was living in a rental without my kitchen equipment. Now I am back in production.

Cocoa shortbread dough made, I popped it into a Ziploc and into the fridge to chill. I wanted to make pfefferneusse next, but I couldn’t find a paper recipe copy and I didn’t want to stop to go upstairs for my laptop, so I made up maple and nutmeg sugar cookies next. More wonderful smells arose: maple syrup and freshly grated nutmeg, butter. The maple dough went into another bag (I used to chill doughs in metal bowls, but I bought a small refrigerator to fit my kitchen and I don’t have shelf space for four or five metal bowls if I want to keep eating regular meals before Christmas; plus, I don’t buy plastic wrap anymore).

I turned to ginger cookie dough. The first step is to heat butter, shortening, molasses and brown sugar together. Microwaves and Pyrex bowls are handy for this. I was nuking and stirring, nuking and stirring by turns to melt the butter when my neighbor texted me that it was a good time to bring her some muffins I had promised her.

My late mother taught me to clean as I go in the kitchen. It is unlike me to leave a baking project half-finished, but if I stayed long enough to finish the ginger dough Eileen and Harry would not get their muffins. I hastily screwed the top onto the flour jar, but left everything else as it was.

When I got home, I had minutes to assemble a lunch of leftovers and to practice a guitar part I wanted to play at a musical Zoom — no time to finish the dough or clean the kitchen. I saw swirls of congealed shortening on top of the dark brown mass. Fragrant with molasses and brown sugar, but unattractive at this stage.

My genuine happiness at working again with sugar and butter as primary ingredients collides with a shudder as I picture the flour-strewn counter, the glass bowl of glop, not to mention the floor. And so, for now, I delay by writing about the clean-up I am avoiding.

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Categories Christmas baking, cookies, seasonal recipes

A Quince Experiment: Quince and Apple Pie

December 8, 2025 //
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A few weeks ago, one of the vendors at the farmers market had quinces for sale. I have heard of quinces but have never tasted one, so I bought one. I discussed with the vendor adding it to an apple pie or apple crisp. She recommended cooking it separately before adding it to a pie. She said the fragrance was wonderful.

The quince sat in the fruit bowl for a few weeks, next to a single orange and a few local apples while I looked at quince recipes on the internet. The most intriguing one involved cutting the quince in half like a squash, scooping the guts out, and baking it with spices and honey in the cavity. The day before Thanksgiving I bought a bag of Granny Smith apples at Grocery Outlet — not my favorites, but serviceable when I need cooking apples and local apples will soon be gone.

Yesterday it was time to use up two homemade pie crusts left from the holiday. I still had three local apples in the fruit bowl, plus the Granny Smiths. I pulled out my trusty 1956 Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook, my mother’s and my go-to cookbook for basic cooking, and flipped to the index for Q.

No entries for quince.

Okay. I went for my Deborah Madison cookbook collection. Madison makes tea from quince pips and candied quinces and uses quinces in filling for mince pies.

I peeled the quince, and then cut into it, which was difficult: I had to sharpen my knife three times while removing the core and seeds and cutting the fruit into pieces. Are they always like this? The fragrance was underwhelming, faintly citrus-y. Was it even ripe? (The skin was bright yellow).

In the end, I threw it in a saucepan with a third of a cup of sugar and some water and let it cook while I rolled out the bottom pie crust and stuck the crust back in the fridge to chill.

Then I received a phone call that there was a ticket available for the last matinee of The Nutcracker. I turned off the stove, kissed the cat goodbye and hurried to town.

I watched half of the performance. I was shocked to learn that there was no live orchestra (I don’t go to The Nutcracker for the dancing, but for the music). The artistic director had set the piece as a local story in a barn, the Olympic Mountains and lavender fields. It still had the Rat King and the Nutcracker and plenty of corps de ballet.

I would have stayed for the second half, but I was meeting my friend Eileen to drive out for the annual lighting of Lake Crescent Lodge, a beautiful art deco building. There was a fire blazing in the fieldstone fireplace, a decorated tree, a Santa hat on one of the resident deer heads, carols by the Sequim chapter of the Sweet Adelines, costumed elves passing trays of cookies, and Santa himself, posing for photos with infants, children, teens, and bold old folks.

We drove home in the dark. I fed the cat and ate salad, vegetables and the last of the Thanksgiving stuffing for dinner.

Time to finish the pie. I put the oven on to preheat to 400 F, retrieved the pie shell from the refrigerator, scooped out the poached quince chunks with a slotted spoon, peeled and sliced the three local apples and one gargantuan Granny Smith, added half a cup of sugar mixed with nutmeg and cinnamon, piled the fruit and sugar into the crust, dotted the filling with butter. I rolled out the top crust and crimped it in place, popped the pie in the oven and started doing dishes.

I had my first slice of pie after lunch today. The quince’s flavor still reminded me of roasted sweet potato — not unpleasant, but not special in my opinion. Sometimes there was a faint rose-like odor. I’d just as soon eat plain apple pie.

Did any of you grow up eating quinces? What do you like to do with them? They are gone for this year, but next year I can do another experiment.

P.S. This morning, a week after I made the apple and quince pie, I used the leftover quince poaching syrup as part of the liquid in a three-day batch of oatmeal — one cup poaching liquid, two cups whole milk. I added dried apricots, dried sour cherries, almonds and grated fresh ginger, thinking those flavors would go with the residual quince flavor. I was right. I made a triple batch because the poaching liquid was quite sweet and I wanted to dilute the sweetness.

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Categories Uncategorized

The Monte Rio Diaries, Part Two

August 15, 2024 //
0

My friend S. is a late riser. I live a whole life before she gets up in the morning. I check email. I charge up a computer and a phone. I re-pack my luggage. I make coffee. I say hello to S’s husband G. who gets up even earlier than I do.

This morning I found a bowl of Bosc pears on the kitchen counter. That was the signal to make a baked pear pancake: after preheating a 425 F oven I sliced pears and caramelized them in a cast iron skillet with sugar and butter. While they were cooking I made a batter of flour, melted butter, eggs, milk, vanilla and raw sugar. I poured the batter over the fruit and popped it in the oven for twenty-five minutes. Voila.

After eating I went out to sketch. I’m supposedly taking a sketching class on Zoom, but I tried for twenty minutes to get in. No dice. I had assembled my sketching materials, filled my watercolor pen, sharpened some aquarelles, so I opened my sketchbook and began to sketch the bonsai tree out on the deck. I hate bonsai and feel sorry for them, so I made it a real, non-stunted tree and started filling in the colors and shapes of the trees in the landscape behind it. I used too much water trying to make the colors blend — I tore the bottom of the paper and my pigment bled through onto the next page or so. I left the sketchbook outside to dry and rinsed my brushes in the sink, checked email again and sat down to write. S. is still sound asleep.

I am getting used to S.’s kitchen: the rack of cast iron pans hanging above the stove, the baking sheets stashed next to the piano, the refrigerator door that requires slamming to stay shut. But sometimes I find the unexpected.

After lunch on Monday I was craving a sweet. I asked Sadie what she had. She offered me a chocolate bar and mentioned baking mixes. Nah. I had brought a container of rolled oats from the house I left in July. “I could make cookies,” I said. “I brought oatmeal. Do you have flour?” I knew there was butter and I had sugar.

“I have flour. I have eggs. Do you know where everything is?”

“I think so. I took a tour when you-all weren’t around.”

I found the flour in a low cupboard with other baking supplies and packages of pasta. While I was looking for it, I found a jar of bright white powder. I read the label pasted on the jar lid: “Powdered sugar, pretty much ant-free.” I laughed out loud and have been telling the story ever since.

S. got up. I procured a basket and picked blackberries in the garden. She was having breakfast when I got back. When I got hungry I made a peanut butter and blackberry sandwich: ripe blackberries — nature’s jam.

I had a second one of those the next day for lunch before we went to the river to swim. I swam. S. waded into the water a few times and sat on a towel reading. It was lovely: hot day, cool water, negligible current. The water is lower than I have ever seen it at the river, but I have only been here half a dozen times in my life. I would come back. There are hotels here and everything as well as S’s inimitable hospitality.

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Categories baking, breakfast food, cookies, Travel