Christmas Confectionary

The candy stripes of peppermint sticks abound in every direction our eyes happen to glance.  Gingerbread men stand sentry at their sugary iced homes on display in the gourmet shop window.  The sweet scents of fudge emanate from the candy store.   Christmas is definitely a sweet tooth's fantasy come to fruition.  Whether it is the quest for creating lasting holiday memories with family members gathered around the kitchen island, the desire to quell the season's chilling temperatures by firing up the oven for an afternoon of baking, or perhaps a primal response to bulk up our girth for the long cold winter, there is something about the holidays which prompts baking marathons in every home kitchen.


As adults most of us can fondly recall childhood weekend afternoons spent with Mom, Grandma or even Dad, putting those final red and green decorative touches on batches of homemade cookies fresh from the oven.  These memories are so cherished because it returns us to a time of comfort, security and that youthful untarnished magic and joy of the holiday season.  This is probably the most compelling reason for recapturing this activity with the next generations of children and grandchildren.  For foodies like myself, these afternoons spent in the kitchen turning out batch after batch of cookies and other sweet treats are the perfect excuse to take in this holiday tradition as well as play with our mixers and cookie cutters.


There are thousands of cookie recipe variations.  A handful of them have remained tried and true throughout decades of holiday bake offs.  Gingerbread people are one example, an ideal choice for a group of bakers because no two gingerbread men have to look alike when trimming the faces and finishing touches and thus all imaginations are welcome.  Pressed cookies will turn out batches of uniformly shaped wreaths and Christmas trees.  For these one need only tint the dough with some green food coloring before feeding it through the cookie press, and then they can be decorated with a sprinkling red and green sugars.  A few more classics include burbon balls, rugelach, jam-filled cookies and hazelnut crescents.  The cookie which remains the most inspiring for artful creativity when decorating is the sugar cookie.  Once the dough is rolled out, holiday shapes are cut with cutters, baked, cooled and then the real fun begins.  These can be decorated with a whole plethora of embellishment, such as the snowflake covered in an ice blue tinted glaze and then finished off with strategically placed silvery or pearlescent dragees.  Once iced with a white glaze and then striped with red sugar, a candy cane shape becomes festive.  An entire decorator's 'buffet' can be set up with bowls of colored icings, glazes, sugars, cinnamon dot candies, licorice, sprinkles, dragees, chocolate chips, etc.


Homemade candies increase in popularity this time of year as well.  Home kitchens turn into chocolatiers as truffles are formed and rolled in powdered cocoa, chopped nuts, toasted coconut flakes or confectioners sugar.  Fudge is another much loved chocolate treat, dense blocks of rich dark, milk or white chocolate, often with the incorporation of additional flavors such as peanut butter, chopped nuts or toffee bits.  One of my favorite holiday candies to make at home is chocolate peppermint bark.  Very simply, dark chocolate is melted and spread over a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and placed in the refrigerator until it hardens.  Then white chocolate gets the same melting treatment and is quickly spread over the dark chocolate layer.  It then gets dots of red food color lightly swirled over it for a marbled appearance, chopped candy canes get sprinkled over it, and back into the refrigerator it goes until hardened.  Then the parchment paper is peeled off and the sheet of peppermint-studded chocolate gets broken up into snack-sized shards.  


The marriage of chocolate and peppermint result in the ideal holiday couple.  This pairing makes its annual appearance by way of the peppermint mocha drink enjoyed in coffee houses, as well as the adorning crown of a cone at your local ice cream parlor.  On a shopping spree at Williams Sonoma I was welcomed by seasonal displays brimming with tins of their own peppermint bark and of their peppermint hot chocolate, the latter of which I highly recommend.  Recipes for chocolate-peppermint desserts grace the dessert plates at many of the season's holiday dinners.


I have noticed this year's increasing popularity of the meringue cookie, also known as a meringue kiss.  Meringue is a mixture of stiffly beaten egg whites with sugar.  Soft meringue is then baked as a topping over pies and other desserts, such as lemon meringue pie, until the peaks and edges are browned.  Hard meringue is piped onto parchment paper and baked at a very low temperature for a long period of time until it is dry and crisp.  This method can be used to make meringue shells to be later filled with ice cream, pastry cream or fruit salads; or it can be used to make cookies which often have other ingredients mixed into the meringue such as chopped nuts, mini chocolate chips, crushed peppermint candy or toasted coconut.


MERINGUE KISSES


Ingredients:
3 egg whites (room temperature!)
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
3/4 cup sugar


1 teaspoon flavored extract of your choice (see suggestions below)
Red or green food coloring, if desired
1/2 cup stir in of your choice, if desired


Preheat oven to 250 degrees and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.  Place the egg whites and salt in the bowl of a Kitchenaid or other stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment.  Beat on a medium setting until the egg whites appear frothy.  Add the cream of tartar and increase the mixer speed.  With the mixer on, add the sugar in increments of one tablespoon at a time.  Then add extract and a few drops of coloring, if using.  Continue beating the mixture until the meringue is thick and glossy.  Turn the mixer off and lift up the whisk.  If the meringue holds a very stiff peak, then it is ready for the next step.  If adding any stir-ins, gently fold them in with a rubber spatula.  Gently spoon meringue into a pastry bag fitted with a star tip.  Pipe the meringue onto the prepared cookie sheets in bite-sized stars, roughly two inches apart.  Bake for one hour, then turn the oven off but leave the meringues in the oven for another two hours.  Cool at room temperature.


Ideas for flavor extracts: vanilla, peppermint, orange, almond, or try a combination of 3/4 teaspoon vanilla and 1/4 teaspoon rum extracts and the addition of 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg for a flavor reminiscent of egg nog.


Ideas for stir-ins: crushed candy canes, finely chopped hazelnuts or almonds, finely chopped toffee, miniature dark or white chocolate chips, finely chopped dried cherries or cranberries.


Note: if you want to decorate the meringues with colored sugars for a festive look, dust them with the sugars before placing into the oven.


As you turn your kitchen into a Christmas confectionary, enjoy this time.  For some, holiday baking is a labor of love.  For others it is a way to bond with family or friends on a Saturday afternoon, and if you make enough to wrap up in colorful tins or cellophane secured with ribbon, it's a nice little gift to share with friends, coworkers, teachers, sitters, etc.  Either way, you will not need to embark on sweet dreams, as the sweets will become a reality as you savor the flavors of the season.

Ode to the Pumpkin

The month of October brings forth the annual pilgrimages by all to the nearest pumpkin patch.  On Long Island, the entire eastern north fork is devoted to the quest, evidenced by the clogging traffic congestion on roads whose designers never anticipated such volume.  The surrounding wineries, farm stands and restaurants have all capitalized on the pumpkin picking weekends as they offer fall festivals which become more and more spectacular each season.  We all visit the various farms that beckon to come and pick their pumpkins - pay us to complete our harvest so we don't have to!  It's all in fun, after all what would a front porch on Halloween be without the jack-o-lantern sentries to welcome our guests?  Uncarved pumpkins of varying size and color strategically arranged with colorful mums make for a warming entrance into our homes throughout November as well.


The pumpkin is a member of the gourd family, as are other squash and, yes, the watermelon.  Pumpkins have been a crop of North America dating back to the native Indians.  Embraced by the settlers who colonized America, it quickly earned its rightful place on the Thanksgiving table as pumpkin pie, this presentation retaining the starring role in Thanksgiving tradition ever since.


This year the white pumpkin is all the rage in sophisticated fall decor since they graced the covers of home magazines.  The humble round orange pumpkin has evolved indeed to a variety of sizes, shapes and colors.  I saw white ones, I saw hunter green ones, I saw buff shades and sagey grey-green hues.  There was even a plum-purple variety on display.  With all of the choices that abound, the best laid seasonal display for your home is a carefully chosen selection of several different specimens; and then the orange guys are destined to be carved into grinning and grimacing faces to adorn the steps and porch railings that surround our front doors.


What about the ones that don't make the cut for the role of Jack?  There are pumpkin recipes galore from September through November.  We can't run away from the pumpkins that surround us.  Their flavors, enhanced with autumn spices, appear to us wherever we turn, from pumpkin spiced latte at the coffee house and pumpkin doughnuts at every bakery to pumpkin-filled ravioli in the Italian markets and pumpkin bisques in the restaurants' stock pots.   Most recipes call for using canned pumpkin; Libby's is one brand, simply pureed pumpkin without added seasonings, it is perfectly acceptable for any recipe whether sweet or savory.  However, if you have an overabundance of pumpkins that your overzealous excitement loaded into the wagon out on that  pumpkin picking expedition, why not use them up?  They do make a perfect seasonal decoration through the Thanksgiving Day feast, but we all know darned well that the day after the feast, you'll be joyously evicting those pumpkins in lieu of reindeer and snowmen.


The process should be simple enough, much like baking an acorn squash.  Take the pumpkin and halve it.  Scoop out all of the seeds - by the way, a melon baller works wonders for that task.  Lightly rub the cut side with melted butter and place, cut side down, in a roasting pan.  If the pumpkin is large, you may need to use two roasting pans and you may need to cut it into quarters or even eighths.   Generally the smaller the pumpkin, the more tender it will be.  Place in a 425-degree oven for about an hour.  Remove from the oven, flip over the pieces so that the cut sides are face-up, a spoon should easily go deep into the flesh with no resistance, otherwise return to the oven and keep checking every fifteen minutes.  Once cooked, allow to cool completely, then scoop out the flesh.  Place the flesh into a very fine-meshed sieve, place the sieve over a large bowl and allow to drain for a couple of hours.  You don't want that added liquid that seeps out to end up ruining your recipe.  Next toss the pumpkin into the food processor and puree it, then deposit it into some tupperware and you're ready to cook!  My husband Brian is already being enlisted for a repeat performance of a pumpkin bisque he made a few years ago; it was creamy, velvety bliss.


If you reserve the seeds from the pumpkin, they can be husked and toasted.  These nutty-flavored toasted pumpkin seeds, called pepitas, are healthy snacks and also often used to top soups, salads and some Mexican dishes.


Here is the recipe for my grandmother's pumpkin bread, which she passed down to me when I was engaged to be married; it has become an annual fall tradition ever since.


Pumpkin Bread
Ingredients:   
2 ½ cups flour
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

2 eggs

½ cup vegetable oil

1 15-ounce can pumpkin

½ teaspoon vanilla

1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

1 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Grease and flour two loaf pans.  Mix all ingredients.  Divide batter between two pans.  Bake for 1¼  hours.  Cool before removing from pans; do not cut until completely cooled.  Makes 2 loaves.

Alternative: for my fellow chocolate lovers out there, substitute 1 cup of chocolate chips for the raisins.  I came up with this idea and acted on it one year, to the delight of my chocolate-loving husband.  Grandma loved chocolate as well, so I do not think she would disapprove!