Thursday's Tumbles and Stumbles ~ Adventures in Christmas Baking

Today is Christmas and I pray that each of you have a day full of love and companionship.

I decided that this year I would change things up and challenge myself. No, I didn't offer to do Christmas at my house. I'm still not ready or comfortable enough in my skill levels to take the challenge of 75 people in my home for dinner again yet.

Instead of my usual cake pops, Rudolf and Santas, I decided to bake an 8" cheesecake. Actually two of them. One went to a neighbor who elfed me this year. More on that in a bit.

This was a challenge/ adventure that almost undid me. My cheesecake takes about eight hours to make normally, but this was a twenty-four hour for each one. It's a good thing I started on Saturday) I made Double Chocolate and Peppermint Cheesecakes.

The first challenge was making chocolate refrigerator cookies for the solid base of the

cheesecake. Mixing the cookie dough went fine thanks to the stand mixer daughter #2 got me last Christmas. But rolling it into tube and then in plastic wrap was a nightmare. After two hours of playing with it, I finally got them into the freezer to chill. Yeah, they are refrigerator cookies when you have the time to let them chill in the Fridgidaire overnight, but I wanted to bake these off in a few hours. Once chilled, I sliced cookies off the rolls and placed them on a couple large baking pans. I think this is the first tie I used my big oven this year. They turned out perfect. Transferring to cookies from the pan to e rack to cool was another matter. They stuck to the parchment paper. You wouldn't think that any cookie made with THREE pounds of real butter would stick to anything, but they did. Eventually, they all cooled, and then I crumbled them in my mini food processor.

Then came the decorations for the cheesecake. Yes, I suppose  I could have left it plain, but I wanted it Christmasy. So I bought some Bob's Candy Canes to tie in with the peppermint extract I'd be using in the cheesecake part of this dessert.

I'd figured that a couple of raps on the table edge and they'd break into pieces and tearing their wrapper like any other candy cane. Wrong! This wrapper was heavy duty and it stretched. I had to enlist my hubby to unwrap the darn things and he had to use scissors! I'm just glad I didn't buy this brand for my littler grandchildren. Finally after three hours I had naked candy cane pieces. This decorated sides of the cheesecakes. On top of the chocolate ganache covering the cheesecake, I'd planned to pipe frosting poinsettias. I looked all over town for red royal icing to no avail. They were sold out. I could make  royal icing, but coloring it the deep red color I needed would be a problem. Ninety-nine percent of red food coloring has a metallic after taste when used in large amounts. I settled for more crushed candy canes in white chocolate (peppermint bark).

Making the cheesecake portion went along with little difficulty except getting the cream cheese out of its foil liner. Another, 'teeth don't fail me now' moment. Cracking the eggs one by one one-handed was a task I learned too many years ago as a chef. The mixer blended it up beautifully. The whipping cream added volume to make it extra airy.

So it's about 10 PM on Monday when this first cheesecake makes its way into the oven for an hour and ten minutes cook time. This was followed by a the hour cool down in the oven, and release from the springform pan collar to begin its six-hour chill out flavor meld time.

Tuesday, the second one went way faster because I already had the crust prepped. It went into the oven an was cooking while the other one was chilling out. While the second one was doing its major chill out, I decorated the first one.

Mission accomplished! One cheesecake for Christmas dinner with my family at my sister's house and one for my neighbor.

Now about my neighbor. She and her husband bought the house diagonally from mine. At the time she was raising her 4th grandchild. My youngest daughter  used to babysit him for her. She is now raising her fifth out of seven grandchildren. We got our precious Little Bit from her and she's a great neighbor.

December 1st, a Christmas wreath appeared on our front door. I had no idea who put it there but I had my suspicions. The next day, our mailbox was decorated. Then every other day gift bag were left on my door step. An angel with chocolates, a reindeer with peanut brittle, an LED snowman, and a small chest with chocolate chip cookies magically appeared. But I caught one evening as she was dropping off half a dozen cupcakes.

Well Wednesday was my turn to surprise her. I couldn't leave it on her doorstep because it had to be refrigerated. I placed one of the cheesecakes on the plate that had the cupcakes on it. I never return a empty plate that had a kindness on it to begin with. I reciprocate the kindness. I thanked her profusely for the joy she had brought my hubby and I, and handed her the cheesecake. I told her, "God bless you and yours for keeping the Christmas spirit alive. Merry Christmas."

Her smile made all the hard work of this challenging effort worth every minute.

Merry Christmas, y'all and I'll be back soon.

Sunday Stroke Survival~Baking and Doing Dishes

Now normally for Christmas, I'm feeding fifty to seventy-five people that's just the closest family members. My family didn't start out this huge...it was just my mom, dad, little sister, and me. We were just an ideal semi-American text book family.

My Girls and me

Then some friend of ours died in an automobile accident, and my family adopted their children...all seven of them. That was the population explosion in sheer madness in numbers. Later we grew up and had children of our own, and their children started having children. Up until the death this year of my step grandmother, it was four generations at any family gathering.

Every year I gave each family an assortment of cookies. Some were my own recipe and some were my grandmother's treasured recipes. That won't happen this year. Imagine... 144 dozen cookies! That's a lot of cookies just short of a professional bakery. Also this year marks, the first time I am not prepping or cooking for this small army of relatives. My stroke changed all of that.

I've done very little cooking since my stroke except for popping things in the microwave. It has been a major battle inside my brain with the former chef in me. I love to cook and bake. It has been a passion of mine since I chased all the servants out of the kitchen, and made my first vegetable soup and cake for my parents' anniversary way back in 1969. Bet that's longer than some of you readers have been on Earth. I've run a catering business, been the line cook, been the executive chef, been the general manager of restaurants, and a culinary instructor. So having to turn over the reins to someone else really gets my goat big time.

I asked my husband for one of those cake pop ovens for Christmas. I thought they wouldn't be to difficult to make one-handed. Since it just the two of us in the house, it didn't make sense to buy a pan which makes a dozen or more. Also it didn't make sense electricity-wise. Anyhow, it arrived last week just in time for my kitchen-aid mixer to die a horrible death. I can't really complain. It's lasted me ten years and I definitely put it through more than enough to make twenty standard hand-held mixers scream in protest with all the wedding cakes, cheesecakes, gallons of frosting, and meals I used it for.

Anderson cake 580 servings

So here I am with a new toy and unable to play with it. I have a hand held mixer. It was my backup for small amounts of colored frosting, but I have trouble using it now. Too many switches, bowls to hold, and hold the mixer too with one-handed. I bought a new stand mixer. It's a cheap one, but it works. I won't be making six to eight tiered wedding cakes again anytime soon.

Red Velvet with Cream Cheese Frosting

I figured right. the cake pops were easy. The regular cake mixes made too much batter so I poured the leftover into Rubbermaid water bottles. One cake mix, I'm still not ready to make it from scratch, will make enough batter for a week of fresh cake, baking every other day  for us. The Rubbermaid water bottles are easy enough to handle one-handed. It's just squeeze enough into the cups and close the lid of the oven to bake. Four minutes and I have fresh cake. Decorating them is just melting some store bought frosting and dipping. I haven't tried fancy decorating yet just some swirls back and forth across them, and some sprinkles. But wait, as my confidence builds, I'll be experimenting more.

Another milestone I've made is figuring out how to wash dishes one-handed. Now I have an automatic dishwasher, but as little as we eat, it would take a week to make a full load. I mean really, two small pots, two plates, two glasses, and eating utensils for a dishwasher load? Who would do that? I don't put out serving utensils since I make up the plates from the pots and serve one hot meal a day.

I'll carry them to my bathroom sink. It's small. It has sides. I can fill the sink halfway with water and wash dishes to my hearts content. I will wash my sink before and after I do this. The last line is for all you people that went "Ewww!"when you read that. I tried to wash dishes in my kitchen. It was just to big to hold my dishes and try to wash them too. I just didn't have enough hands. Dish washing is usually a two-handed activity.

Unfortunately while taking the added time to figure out all this new stuff, my writing time has been impacted. While I'm still writing this week, I'm in Christmas mode, aren't we all? I think I accomplished 600 words in the manuscript. Maybe I'm trying to do too much once again. Possibly, but that's who I am Mrs. Overachieving-Everything. While it's been said that you should or try to learn something new everyday. I'm slower now. Instead of learning or trying five somethings everyday, it's more like one every other day. I'll be putting up a new snippet soon, so be watching.

So what have you learned this week?

Keep writing and loving the Lord.