Holiday Baking Report
Dec. 22nd, 2005 11:16 pmChristmas Pinwheels
The Sacramento Bee is featuring one holiday cookie recipe a week all through the holiday season. The first one was for Christmas pinwheel cookies, which looked cool, so I decided I would make some.
On Tuesday, I carefully made myself a lunch and left it on the kitchen counter. I did remember to take my shopping list (eggs, cocoa) with me to work. I left the shopping list at work, but managed to get both things on it when I stopped at the grocery store on my way home from work. As I was pulling out of the Safeway parking lot, I realized I have no butter at home.
On Wednesday, I went to the grocery store and bought butter. I got home, looked at the recipe, and discovered that it takes cream of tartar, which I did not have.
Today I went to the store and bought cream of tartar. I decided that my plan of action is to make the dough when I get up in the morning (hopefully around 7:45, so I can also listen to the hip hop station's Friday morning throwback jams), let it refrigerate while I'm at breakfast, and bake the cookies later in the day. After doing my other baking (see below), I don't think I have enough flour left. This will necessitate either an early trip to Safeway or a later in the day baking adventure.
Birthday Dessert
Tomorrow is my brother's birthday, for which I make the dessert. My mother is a lactose intolerant vegetarian on Weight Watchers. You can imagine how difficult this makes her birthday dessert. This year, she said she'd like wacky cake (which she won't eat) with raspberry sauce and fat free Cool Whip (which she can eat).
Wacky cake is easy, once I bought the cocoa from the first grocery store trip above. Cool Whip is even easier. (I also bought whipping cream for those of us who prefer real whipped cream.)
The raspberry sauce my mother makes is pureed raspberries with a few whole raspberries as well. This seems simple enough: pick up some frozen raspberries, puree them in the blender, put it in a nice bowl.
Safeway does not carry unsweetened frozen raspberries. They have sweetened raspberries. The have unsweetened mixed berries. They do not have unsweetened raspberries.
Luckily Raley's, which is where I bought the cream of tartar this evening, carries two separate brands of unsweetened frozen raspberries. I bought the ones that were eleven cents cheaper.
I do not own a blender. This is much less distressing than the difficulty of finding raspberries. I will be taking all of the dessert pieces over to my mother's tomorrow morning to puree the raspberries and avoid having to make an out of the way trip to my house between the restaurant and my parents' house tomorrow evening.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Given sufficient protection against a heated oven, I might be able to make chocolate chip cookies (Nestle Tollhouse's recipe but with 3 cups of flour instead of 2 1/4) in my sleep. While the wacky cake was in the oven, I mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. In addition to the miscellaneous candy, pound of Joy Lyn's candy, and half-eaten graham cracker gingerbread house on my counter, I now have 55 chocolate chip cookies spread out over the kitchen counter and dining room table.
The Sacramento Bee is featuring one holiday cookie recipe a week all through the holiday season. The first one was for Christmas pinwheel cookies, which looked cool, so I decided I would make some.
On Tuesday, I carefully made myself a lunch and left it on the kitchen counter. I did remember to take my shopping list (eggs, cocoa) with me to work. I left the shopping list at work, but managed to get both things on it when I stopped at the grocery store on my way home from work. As I was pulling out of the Safeway parking lot, I realized I have no butter at home.
On Wednesday, I went to the grocery store and bought butter. I got home, looked at the recipe, and discovered that it takes cream of tartar, which I did not have.
Today I went to the store and bought cream of tartar. I decided that my plan of action is to make the dough when I get up in the morning (hopefully around 7:45, so I can also listen to the hip hop station's Friday morning throwback jams), let it refrigerate while I'm at breakfast, and bake the cookies later in the day. After doing my other baking (see below), I don't think I have enough flour left. This will necessitate either an early trip to Safeway or a later in the day baking adventure.
Birthday Dessert
Tomorrow is my brother's birthday, for which I make the dessert. My mother is a lactose intolerant vegetarian on Weight Watchers. You can imagine how difficult this makes her birthday dessert. This year, she said she'd like wacky cake (which she won't eat) with raspberry sauce and fat free Cool Whip (which she can eat).
Wacky cake is easy, once I bought the cocoa from the first grocery store trip above. Cool Whip is even easier. (I also bought whipping cream for those of us who prefer real whipped cream.)
The raspberry sauce my mother makes is pureed raspberries with a few whole raspberries as well. This seems simple enough: pick up some frozen raspberries, puree them in the blender, put it in a nice bowl.
Safeway does not carry unsweetened frozen raspberries. They have sweetened raspberries. The have unsweetened mixed berries. They do not have unsweetened raspberries.
Luckily Raley's, which is where I bought the cream of tartar this evening, carries two separate brands of unsweetened frozen raspberries. I bought the ones that were eleven cents cheaper.
I do not own a blender. This is much less distressing than the difficulty of finding raspberries. I will be taking all of the dessert pieces over to my mother's tomorrow morning to puree the raspberries and avoid having to make an out of the way trip to my house between the restaurant and my parents' house tomorrow evening.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Given sufficient protection against a heated oven, I might be able to make chocolate chip cookies (Nestle Tollhouse's recipe but with 3 cups of flour instead of 2 1/4) in my sleep. While the wacky cake was in the oven, I mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. In addition to the miscellaneous candy, pound of Joy Lyn's candy, and half-eaten graham cracker gingerbread house on my counter, I now have 55 chocolate chip cookies spread out over the kitchen counter and dining room table.