As I write, big pieces of fluffy snow are whirling past the window. It's been snowing on and off all this past weekend, on Saturday morning I pulled back the curtains to reveal the first snowy landscape of the year.
I was immediately inspired to lug up the boxes marked "Christmas" from the basement and to bake like there was no tomorrow. I had the added incentive of knowing Keith's brother would be spending the night, so there would be an extra mouth to feed.
The white Christmas tree went up in its spot, the fall wreath was exchanged for the Christmas one, dirty sheets got thrown into the washer and then Keith's brother arrived. The boys decided they wanted to go out for a cheeseburger and a pitcher of beer so I happy waved them off.
Ah, the pleasure of having the house to myself. I put on Accuradio's Religious Christmas Classics and turned on the oven. It was an absolutely delicious afternoon. I started with kaiser rolls and while that dough was rising on the warm oven top, I started in on a new cookie recipe, Amish ginger cookies.
These cookies are now in my top three cookies of all time category. These might even be the pen ultimate cookie. They are rich with butter, glisten with granulated sugar, dense, moist and warm with spice. The recipe calls for a stick and a half of butter, a quarter cup of molasses, and a teaspoon each of ground clove, ginger and cinnamon. The smell as they baked was heavenly.
I under baked the first batch, since I do tend to err on the side of the underdone cookie. But the next batch, when allowed an extra minute or two, got all deliciously cracked on top, looking "rustic" -a word one hears a lot on the Food channel.
After I attended to my mise en place (a French phrase that loosely translated means "clean up your cooking crap already") I then moved on to chocolate chip banana muffins. Only these aren't muffins. That name is just a disguise to hide the fact that they're as decadent as a chocolate cake.
It calls for a cup of melted butter, cooled. I have made this recipe several times already, but had never completely melted the butter, just softened it. This time, however, I tried it. The difference in the texture of the cake was amazing. It was almost as soft as Angel food cake. The butter and sugar in the recipe cause the top of the muffins to caramelize the most beautiful, blushing gold and the chunks of chocolate throughout set off the delicate banana flavor.
By this time, the kaiser rolls were ready to be punched down, a most satisfying step in the baking process. One actually punches the dough and poof! All air gushes out and the dough immediately deflates to half its size.
After being punched down, the dough got divided into eight pieces, rolled into balls and placed on greased baking sheets to rise again. After half an hour, I brushed them with an egg white wash and put them in a four hundred degree oven.
By now, the kitchen smelled like a bakery shop at four in the morning, as trays of crusty bread are slid out on wide, wooden paddles and flaky confectioneries are arranged behind the glass display. Also, as I baked, I could hear the strains of "Oh come, oh come Emanuel," as well as The Elizabethan Singers singing "The First Noel" and Bing Crosby crooning, "Silent Night."
It was a really marvelous afternoon and more then once I felt my heart well up with some emotion I couldn't identify. It was some potent mixture of both grief and joy. The grief welled up especially when the songs talked of little children or the little child in the manager. I wasn't sure, was I grieving for the children I haven't had, the hurts I lived through as a small child, or for the innocent baby Jesus, born for sacrifice to the human race.
Then, just as I was on the verge of weeping, on would come a beautiful jazzy, flamenco version of "Silent Night" played on a classical guitar and I would be dancing around the warm kitchen in my bare feet, eating another ginger cookie.
Actually, after I ate five ginger cookies and a kaiser roll for dinner last night, I realized for the sake of my jeans, I really had to get them out of the house. I sent Keith to work this morning with two bulging plastic baggies of them to be given away.
Wow. The snow is really coming down now. Maybe I'll put sturdy boots on and take the girls out into the white.
