#23: My Big Epicurean Misfire

I’m an average Jo(sephine) in many regards, but there are three things I do quite well:

1. Whistle
2. Fold fitted sheets
3. Bake

The first two talents aren’t significant to this story. However, keep your eye on #3. My mother has a theory that good cooks are not good bakers, and good bakers are not good cooks. Baking is science. Cooking is creativity. We’re dealing with two different skill-sets.

It’s just part of Nature’s Law.

~*~

It’s Christmas Day at 3:00PM. I’m completely relaxed because everything is exactly where it should be.

• On the counter: An antipasti with capicola, olives, feta, mushrooms, Havarti and black peppercorn cheddar
• In the oven: Pancetta-stuffed beef tenderloin, au gratin potatoes, cornbread casserole, roasted root vegetables
• On the stove: Maple-glazed Brussels sprouts with chestnuts
• In the refrigerator: A gorgeous New York cheesecake

Our guests have a 3:30 PM ETA. My fellas (1 big, 2 small) are building the Lego Hogwarts Castle in the family room. Upon my insistence, I am alone in the kitchen, working my way through 36×37 Assignment #23: Cook Christmas Dinner Totally Solo.

I cook a lot, but this is the first time I’ve tackled a feast all by myself. So far, this is easier than I thought it would be. I offer myself my most hearty congratulations: “How smart was I to prep everything early, right? The table is set…my timeline is working…why do people get so stressed about the holidays?” I pass the next 30 minutes feeling happily smug. It’s delightful.

And then, all Hell breaks loose.

~*~

The maple glaze won’t caramelize. The potatoes need 10 more (unexpected) minutes in the oven. I still need to shell the chestnuts and start the sauce for the tenderloin which, by the way, is decidedly too rare. In my gut I feel the hot sting of looming failure.

Meanwhile, my guests are in the family room. It’s 30 minutes past our expected dinner time, and SC’s sweetheart, Kelli, has kindly and very discretely called or texted her family to say she can’t make it to their place by 5:00. The boys are stir-crazy, so I buy some time by agreeing to let them open their remaining gifts. Everyone relaxes with the news, and in the steamy quiet of my kitchen, I try not to lose my composure.

I tell myself to calm down. Close my eyes, breathe deeply, open again. When I do, I look at the table:

People should already be sitting there, asking for seconds. Instead, they’re still waiting for me. Emily Post would be appalled.

~*~

I look around the table, and my guests nod politely. “Everything is delicious,” they say.

“I’m so sorry,” I spout. “Nothing came out right, and everything is cold.”

“Everything is fine! You did great!” my Aunt Kathy assures me.

“I’m having seconds!” my dad says.

“The beef is excellent!” my brother says.

“We’ll do Christmas dinner at our house next year. And New Year’s dinner next weekend, too.” my mom says. An honest thought, perhaps, but not the most ideal thing to say at the moment. I add hurt feelings to my rolling waves of embarrassment.

I’m out of sorts for the rest of the evening. I almost don’t serve the cheesecake, because what if it’s awful? That would be the Coup de Grace, wouldn’t it?

Still, I do. I serve it up.

And it’s perfect.

~*~

When our last guests head home, I wander back to the kitchen to start washing the dishes. People never believe me when I say this is my favorite part, but it is. I spend the next 30 minutes with my hands in lovely warm water, and I scrub and scrub and scour those pans until my scraps of disappointment twist down the drain.

Maybe my mom is right: Bakers do not make good cooks. Baking is science. Cooking is creativity.

Who knows.

I can at least say this: Bakers make good bakers. I could get rich with a cheesecake like that, I just know it.

~*~ Follow me on Twitter: @36×37
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It’s My Last Holiday Post, I Swear.

I baked for six hours on Saturday.

Gingerbread. Sugar cookies. Chocolate chip. Seven-layer bars. Brownies.

I’d like to say I did it because I’m a slave to the Christmas baking tradition, but that’s not exactly true. The holiday season is just a happy excuse to plug in the Kitchen Aid mixer, switch on some music, and bake for a long and lovely while. It’s relaxing. It’s cheerful. It makes the house smell heavy with butter and flour, rather than the perpetual aroma of morning pancakes.

Plus, in spurts, I had company. H decorated a “Ginger Daddy.”

…and O iced a “Ginger O, and a Ginger Mama.” According to O, the Ginger Mama was white because “she put on too much lotion.”

Dairy/Egg-free Sugar Cookies

I can’t even begin to tell you how delicious (and easy) these are, courtesy of The Gluttonous Vegan.

You’ll need:

2 cups all purpose flour

a pinch of sea salt

1/3 cup vegan margarine

3/4 cup icing/confectioners sugar

1/4 cup canola/sunflower oil

1 tsp almond extract (optional)

Instructions:

PREHEAT your oven to 325 degrees.

CREAM together the margarine, sugar, oil and almond extract until smooth. Add the flour and salt and mix again until it’s a squishy dough.

COVER a baking tray in some grease-proof paper.

PULL OFF small lumps and shape into balls. Place each ball on the tray and flatten into thin discs.

BAKE for 10-14 minutes. You’ll know they’re finished when the edges are just slightly golden.

ICE and DECORATE at will.

Dairy/Egg-free Brownies

It hurts my heart to say this, since I prefer to bake from scratch, but check out Cherrybrook Kitchen’s allergen-free brownie mix. These brownies are better than any non-mix allergen-free brownie recipe I’ve tried.

Dairy/Egg-free Gingerbread

See Monday’s post.

GB’s Most Excellent Chocolate Chip Cookies*

You’ll need:

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks of butter, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) of semi-sweet chocolate chips

*I’m leaving out the secret ingredient.

Instructions:

PREHEAT oven to 375° F.

COMBINE flour, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto an ungreased baking sheets.

BAKE for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

7-layer Bars

You’ll need:

1 stick of butter, melted

1 sleeve of graham crackers, ground

1 can of sweetened condensed milk

1 12-oz. pkg. of semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 12-oz. pkg. of butterscotch chips

½ cup coconut flakes

½ cup chopped pecans

Instructions:

PREHEAT oven to 350 degrees.

POUR melted butter into a 9×13-inch baking dish.

GRIND the graham crackers in a food processor, then pour evenly over the butter, pushing down to make a crust.

POUR sweetened condensed milk evenly over the graham cracker crust.

ADD the semi-sweet chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, coconut flakes and chopped pecans evenly, one ingredient at a time.

BAKE for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown around the edges.

The best part was packing up the cookies and giving them away. Now, I have an excuse to bake again in a few days.

~*~ Find me on Twitter @36×37
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The Fall of the House of Gingerbread

If history has taught us anything, it’s that great houses tend to fall: The House of Tudor, the Ming Dynasty, the Roman Empire, France in the Time of Napoleon—all of which rose and collapsed in a blaze of glory.

So, too, will gingerbread houses rise and fall when you totally wing their construction. I speak these words of truth.

And I can only blame myself.

For the record, I am not a fan of written instructions. I’ll follow a recipe only if it’s short, and I’ll put together a bookcase solely by instinct. I jump feet first into the fray without considering the proper order or outcome of things. Sometimes, I even get away with it and nod smugly at myself, knowing I wasted no time.

I thought this was one of those times, because this is how our (very first ever) gingerbread house looked.

Hold your uproarious applause and accolades, though, because 38 minutes later, it looked like this:

~*~

The Gingerbread

It all began with a lovely (dairy-free/egg-free) molasses dough (courtesy of food.com):

Ingredients:

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 1/2 teaspoons ginger
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cloves
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 cup margarine
1 egg, beaten (or 1 ½ tsp Ener-G egg replacer + 2 Tbs water)
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Directions:

1. In a medium saucepan, heat sugar, molasses, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves to boiling, stirring occasionally.
2. Remove from heat; stir in soda (it will foam up).
3. Stir in margarine till melted.
4. With a fork, stir in egg (or egg replacer), then flour.
5. On a floured surface, knead dough till mixed. Divide dough in half, wrap half with plastic wrap; set aside.
6. Roll half the dough, with a rolling pin, slightly thinner than 1/4 inch.
7. Cut your house shapes.
8. Bake at 325F on a cookie sheet for 12 minutes; cool on a wire rack.

I carved the dough into six 3×5 rectangles: 4 for the walls, 2 for the roof. That was my first mistake. The roof slats needed to be taller than the rest of the pieces—construction basics I did not know.

~*~

The Lessons Learned

There were lots of other mistakes I made along the way. I could have saved the construction team—me, GB, the boys, my brother SC and his sweetheart, Kelli—a lot of trouble if I’d just done my research.

I don’t want you to make the same mistakes and then watch your hard work topple into disrepair. So please, heed this advice I’m paraphrasing from How to Assemble a Christmas Gingerbread House on eHow.com:

1) Prep like a pro: Make sure all your tools are at your fingertips.

2) Pick your platter: It should be flat and sturdy, like foil-covered cardboard or a pretty dish. Lay a piece of string across the surface.

3) Lay your base: Place a dab of icing in the center of your base, then place a small box on top of the dab. Make sure the peaked walls run parallel to the string.

4) Frame up: Dab icing along the sides of the box, then pipe the corners. Press your walls firmly against the box.

5) Raise the roof: Smooth icing along the top edges of the walls, then use those edges to help prop the roof pieces against one another to create two slopes. Pipe icing along the peak.

6) Tie it: Pull the ends of the string up and over the roof, then tie them at the peak to secure the roof and wall frames while they dry.

7) Be patient: Wait an hour or so, then remove the string and decorate.

The Hope for a New Tomorrow

Although it was a blow to watch our empire tumble, all was not lost. Amid the smoldering embers of catastrophe, the gingerbread men and women persevered.

It is for them—and only them—that I shall forge on in my efforts and try again next year.

Gingerbread Kelli and SC

~*~ Find me on Twitter @36×37
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