The party was last night, and I’m up and at the computer at 7:23 on a Sunday, because John & Megan said they want to leave to go back to Chicago at 8:00, and they’re sleeping in Al’s\/Kaylah’s\/Megan’s\/the AFS student’s room, which is right off the kitchen, and I don’t want to interrupt their last few minutes of sleep by doing what John calls clonking – putting dishes away, clattering pans.<\/p>\n
I think I’ll take the cooler down the basement and empty out the beer and melted ice.<\/p>\n
OK, kids are off – so here’s what we ate at the party (written up the following Tuesday, on the bus to Chicago):<\/p>\n
And of course, 4 big platters and a couple small, of cookies. Of which I did not take a single picture.<\/p>\n
I got a roll of liverwurst with the pig, and I was going to make Wrinkle in Time<\/a> sandwiches – liverwurst & cream cheese – but I never got around to it. And I made a batch of pickled beets and eggs, thinking I’d put them out when the deviled eggs were gone – but didn’t do that either. I took them to the Waisman’s latke party the next day though. I cut the eggs open to show the yolks and the beets were large irregular chunks – made a beautiful plate.<\/p>\n I risked a Martha – fruitcake squares, a dense cake with almond paste and dried fruit, brushed with kirsch, and gazed with a chocolate fondant. I liked the cake, but I found so many “Martha’s” – problems – with the fondant. You were supposed to mix cocoa, corn syrup, a little water, and a lot of powdered sugar, heat it, and then add chopped chocolate. I didn’t think the chocolate would melt, added to that thick a mixture, so I melted it first, before adding it. You were supposed to hold each little cake square on a fork, and spoon the coating over – that didn’t work nearly as well as sticking a cake square on a skewer and simply dipping it. Martha cheerily says, “add warm water if the fondant gets too hard” – I had to keep the pot on low heat on the stove the whole time. A water bath would probably work, too. The fondant was way too sweet, even so. I looked around for other chocolate fondant recipes (somewhat hampered by the fact that in the UK, evidently chocolate fondant is a puddling; want we’d call molten chocolate cake), and Martha’s is pretty standard. I didn’t find any recipes with less powdered sugar, but did find some with more water. So I think it’s a recipe to continue to tinker with, for next year. I’ll bet I could just coat the squares with plain melted chocolate, no powdered sugar mixed in at all.<\/p>\n I never made Springerle<\/a> or meringues<\/a> or rolled gingerbread<\/a> or Moravian ginger thins<\/a> this year. I made a batch of dough for spice thins but I let it sit too long. I rolled out a small amount and cut it with my new reindeer cutter but once baked the cookies were hard instead of crisp. The baking soda had gone kaput. I made some of the leftover nukhorn dough into Lora Brody ruggelach, filled with apricot jam and yellow raisins and walnuts. Two disks of dough made 4 dozen and I still have 3 more. Six dozen. I’m thinking about replacing the raisons with mini chocolate chips for chocolate ruggelach, but it means another 6 dozen cookies. More grist to the process of mentally weighing the cookies I have left and debating whether I should make more of anything.<\/p>\n The vestibule was still pretty full after the party. The cookie fairy has been going her rounds. Sunday she took a box to the ER where they straightened out my crooked finger and Monday I packed lots of Tupperware’s for her to deliver to friends and family who couldn’t come to the party. Everything is in the fridge now, except for baby fruitcakes and biscotti.<\/p>\n [portfolio_slideshow pagerpos=disabled]<\/p>\n
![the fancy butter dish<\/a> Al & Emma gave me for my birthday. It was consumed in record time, even for smoked fish.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nAnd of course, 4 big platters and a couple small, of cookies. Of which I did not take a single picture.<\/p>\nI got a roll of liverwurst with the pig, and I was going to make Wrinkle in Time<\/a> sandwiches – liverwurst & cream cheese – but I never got around to it. And I made a batch of pickled beets and eggs, thinking I’d put them out when the deviled eggs were gone – but didn’t do that either. I took them to the Waisman’s latke party the next day though. I cut the eggs open to show the yolks and the beets were large irregular chunks – made a beautiful plate.<\/p>\nI risked a Martha – fruitcake squares, a dense cake with almond paste and dried fruit, brushed with kirsch, and gazed with a chocolate fondant. I liked the cake, but I found so many “Martha’s” – problems – with the fondant. You were supposed to mix cocoa, corn syrup, a little water, and a lot of powdered sugar, heat it, and then add chopped chocolate. I didn’t think the chocolate would melt, added to that thick a mixture, so I melted it first, before adding it. You were supposed to hold each little cake square on a fork, and spoon the coating over – that didn’t work nearly as well as sticking a cake square on a skewer and simply dipping it. Martha cheerily says, “add warm water if the fondant gets too hard” – I had to keep the pot on low heat on the stove the whole time. A water bath would probably work, too. The fondant was way too sweet, even so. I looked around for other chocolate fondant recipes (somewhat hampered by the fact that in the UK, evidently chocolate fondant is a puddling; want we’d call molten chocolate cake), and Martha’s is pretty standard. I didn’t find any recipes with less powdered sugar, but did find some with more water. So I think it’s a recipe to continue to tinker with, for next year. I’ll bet I could just coat the squares with plain melted chocolate, no powdered sugar mixed in at all.<\/p>\nI never made Springerle<\/a> or meringues<\/a> or rolled gingerbread<\/a> or Moravian ginger thins<\/a> this year. I made a batch of dough for spice thins but I let it sit too long. I rolled out a small amount and cut it with my new reindeer cutter but once baked the cookies were hard instead of crisp. The baking soda had gone kaput. I made some of the leftover nukhorn dough into Lora Brody ruggelach, filled with apricot jam and yellow raisins and walnuts. Two disks of dough made 4 dozen and I still have 3 more. Six dozen. I’m thinking about replacing the raisons with mini chocolate chips for chocolate ruggelach, but it means another 6 dozen cookies. More grist to the process of mentally weighing the cookies I have left and debating whether I should make more of anything.<\/p>\nThe vestibule was still pretty full after the party. The cookie fairy has been going her rounds. Sunday she took a box to the ER where they straightened out my crooked finger and Monday I packed lots of Tupperware’s for her to deliver to friends and family who couldn’t come to the party. Everything is in the fridge now, except for baby fruitcakes and biscotti.<\/p>\n[portfolio_slideshow pagerpos=disabled]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The party was last night, and I’m up and at the computer at 7:23 on a Sunday, because John & Megan said they want to leave to go back to Chicago at 8:00, and they’re sleeping in Al’s\/Kaylah’s\/Megan’s\/the AFS student’s room, which is right off the kitchen, and I don’t want to interrupt their last … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2803,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-ds83473gmail-com","4":"post-2788","6":"format-standard","7":"has-post-thumbnail","8":"category-blogpost","9":"post_tag-cookie-season"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2788"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2805,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2788\/revisions\/2805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/static.wixstatic.com\/media\/28efab_df8bbc6c9742481194f5437e3e580f40.jpg\/v1\/fill\/w_1090,h_730,al_c,q_90,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01\/28efab_df8bbc6c9742481194f5437e3e580f40.jpg\"){kind=link}