Too early to think about holiday baking?

[Marthe48]

I'm thinking about asking some of my neighbors if they want to have a cookie exchange around Christmas.

I probably won't make as many kinds of cookies as I used to. I used to make a dozen kinds, but the last several years, much less. Carbs. I think I'll make baklava and elegant almond bars. Spiced walnuts. Teacakes.

I used to make date bars, thumbprints, ragalach, fudge, and 7 layer cookies.

Does anyone have classics? Or try new recipes every year?

[handmade34]

1. our favorites

springerle and rum balls... never too early for rum balls

[Marthe48]

9. I like rum balls better now

everyone in my family loved them, except me. But my tastes have changed. I made some this summer, pina colada rum balls. They were good.

[saidsimplesimon]

2. I always bring southern pecan pie.

For the holidays my daughter and I team up to bake Hershey kiss peanut butter cookies and magic bars. She is diabetic and I prefer my sugar high octane, Mrs Sees candy.

[Grasswire2]

7. mmm mmm mrs. see's

Our favorite pieces are the brown sugar squares and the apricot delight.

Extremely rare for us.

[Marthe48]

10. I've made all those!

Pie

[mindem]

3. Lots of Scandinavian goodies

[Marthe48]

11. what are these?

I'm about 1/4 Swedish. We had an exchange student from Sweden a few years ago and we baked traditional cookies together. Saffron buns and spice cookies.

[mindem]

16. Krumkake

I make this, lefse, julekage, cardamom bread, and other things. I just made some Skoleboller for the fun of it, not necessarily Christmas fare but a real treat.

[Marthe48]

17. Thanks for the ideas!

I found recipes for all of these. I don't know if I will make them, but I've added to my possibilities

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

45. I love skoleboller, when I can get them.

And when I'm feeling energetic I make julekake using my grandmother's recipe, which is probably at least 100 years old and is rather imprecise as to details (as recipes were in those days). It calls for a lot of cardamom, which I love. Grandma also used to make fattigmann bakkels ("poor man's cookies" ), which were wonderful.

[PoliticAverse]

4. Never too early to think about Christmas...

Pizza!

https://www.deliacreates.com/christmas-pizza/

[Marthe48]

12. Yum!

[The Genealogist]

5. Now I have a craving for some pfeffernussen

I worked at a doctor's office and one of the patients would bring in a huge tin of homemade Christmas cookies, about everytime. They all looked and tasted so good. The pfeffernussen were my favorite. They had anise in them, so there were only like two of us who would eat those.

[Grasswire2]

8. when I worked at a doctor's office, a patient would bring a big paper box..

...filled with spectacularly beautiful Scandinavian cookies of all kinds. Made by her.

I never see anything like that unless I go to the Scandinavian Christmas Fair in town where many home bakers bring their best.

[Marthe48]

13. I had pfeffernussen oncewhen I was very young

Someone gave my grandmother a huge box of homemade cookies. I didn't like them and asked what they were. I haven't tried them since. Hope you get a few!

[Grasswire2]

6. I have a deep urge and twelve pounds of good butter stashed.

But the peeps I usually bake for are scattered this year. One gone to Bulgaria on a Fulbright Scholarship to teach English. Another working at a winter sports camp in deep New England. Three more going to Mexico for the holiday. Yada. And so it goes. I was feeling melancholy about it today, although I have two apple pies in the oven right now.

Oh, two more family members have gone vegan -- so nothing with butter or milk will do. And the younger ones, twins, a nut allergy.

I have always made apricot rugelach, and kiflings (like Russian tea cakes), and pecan rum tassies, and Scandinavian almond bars, and apple butter crescents, and zaletti (Italian rolled cookies with currants, rum, and orange zest yum), lime zingers, and coconut islands, and sugar cookies of course, and ... hmm...what else? Too much chex mix, too.

It's a ritual rooted in the example of my aunt Dorothy, who was a home maker extraordinaire. She had better homes and gardens...LOL. And many, many tins of cookies stacked in the pantry by the holidays.

[Marthe48]

14. I have almost all the ingredients

I try to wait to bake until after 12/17, so they are fresh.

I can't believe your variety I have started baking for the local humane society bake sales. I can satisfy my desire to bake and it doesn't stay in the house. There is an h.s. auction coming up 12/2 and I'm looking forward to baking quick breads or cakes for that.

I have 2 vegetarians and a lot of carb-avoiding souls among those I bake for. They want the cookies, they just don't want too many

[mysteryowl]

15. YUM!

[Danascot]

18. Schweddy Balls?

Sorry!

[True Dough]

19. No apology necessary!

That was a great skit!

[smirkymonkey]

21. LOL!

It just isn't Christmas without Schweddy Balls.

[BlueInRedHell]

20. I spread out the baking across the whole season. It seems like too much all at once if I don't

do it that way. My friends tend to agree.

I like to bake chewy chocolate gingerbread cookies, brown sugar pecan pound cake, pumpkin bread, and make black walnut penuche.

[Marthe48]

25. 3 days

I start baking and move from one recipe to the next till I'm done.

In the last few years, I've been making tofu jerky. I was giving it to one of our daughters for a present, and the other girl liked it so well, they both get it. Drying it takes a lot of oven time, so I have to work around that. And be home for hours and hours Which is fine.

[smirkymonkey]

22. My favorites are Russian Teacakes and Italian Pignoli Cookies

[Marthe48]

26. I make teacakes, a big favorite around here

Never made pignoli cookies. All these pictures are really making me eager to bake!

[IcyPeas]

23. baklava is very special

that is truly a gift in itself if you ask me.

[Marthe48]

27. We love it

I make a pan of it, and put a lot on cookie trays I give.

A few years ago, I was short on butter, so I added some olive oil. It made a huge difference in the texture, so I've been doing it that way ever since.

[yellowdogintexas]

39. looking forward to our Christmas trip to Arizona to visit our daughter

her husband and his family. They are Kurdish and there will always be baklava, and lots of fantastic Persian food. Christmas Eve at the parents' house is like the United Nations!!! Lots of fun, lots of good food too. My daughter has to make mac and cheese; she made it for them the first Christmas she was with them and they went nuts, so now she has to fix it every year. She makes the Thanksgiving turkey too.

My son in law's mother special orders her baklava with extra nuts and butter. It is not as sweet and doesn't make my teeth hurt

[MissB]

24. Toffee. Make it every year

Yummmmm

[Marthe48]

28. Homemade candy!

Yum!

[Phoenix61]

29. I bake the same Christmas treats every year

Fruitcake is happily wrapped in Capt. Morgan's Spiced Rum. I used dried fruit instead of the candied fruit. I'll make gingerbread cookie dough one day and peppermint pinwheel dough the next. It gets put in the freezer then baked as needed. Magic cookie bars get made immedialty before delivery. Chocolate chips, coconut, and pecans smashed into sweetened condensed milk on top of a graham cracker crust is too tempting to have around the house.

[Rorey]

30. Prepping ahead

My baked goods have to be fresh, so I do what you do. I make the dough ahead and then portion it and freeze it. If it's for rolled cookies, I roll them out and put them on cookies sheets and cover with plastic wrap and freeze them. When they're frozen I package them up, separating with parchment paper. Then it's super easy to just pull out a dozen and bake them up fresh when needed.

[Rorey]

31. Oh, and those Magic Cookie bars?

I always say I'm going to make them when I eat one someone else has made. I never have. The reason is because I'll eat the whole darned pan all by myself.

The hardest part of baking, for me, is resisting the temptation to overindulge.

[Bayard]

34. Oh yeah, baby!

The ones with graham crackers, toffee, chocolate chips, and nuts?

I tend to make the same ones every year (especially now that I have a brand new oven!).....Magic Cookie Bars, Choc Chip, Coconut, and Moravian Cinnamon cookies. Think I'll branch out this year.

[Runningdawg]

32. Got our Irish fruitcake and Guyanese black cake started on Halloween

I bake them the weekend after Thanksgiving and cure them until Christmas Eve. Neither last very long.
I make real mincemeat too, usually the first week of Dec., and then use it to make cookies.
As for the rest of the holiday baking - we do some old favorites and always try something new. Gingerbread and date cookies are always on the menu. Black Walnut cake with maple icing is another favorite, so is the saltine toffee, my great grandmothers molasses candy and peanut brittle.
This year I am trying "Coyote Droppings" AKA Caramelized Cheetos. You can find the recipe on pinterest.

[Phoenix61]

33. The black cake sounds interesting

Lots of eggs. My fruitcake recipe is eggless. It's a recipe from WWII. I always get a kick out of baking it. Can you imagine how the US would react to having food items rationed? Not those ladies. They found a work around.

[Marthe48]

37. magic cookie bars

my husband's favorite. We had an exchange student from Costa Rica. She could cook a few things and John couldn't cook at all. So they made this recipe together and both of them were amazed how good it turned out. Lots of good memories, but this is the 2nd Christmas without him, so they are still retired.

[yellowdogintexas]

40. yay someone else who uses dried fruit for fruitcake!

I use lots of nuts too. My cake dough has orange juice in it for the liquid. Yummy. It would be great with just cranberries and nuts.

[Phoenix61]

41. Dried pineapple, papaya, dates, apricots, and raisins.

Plus pecans and walnuts. I've thought about renaming it Capt Morgan's Spice Island Rum Cake. Buttermilk for the liquid.

[yellowdogintexas]

43. I went to Sprouts and raided their dried fruit bulk bins

apricots, prunes, raisins, currants, tart cherries, cranberries and blueberries. Walnuts.

Year before last was the first time I had made fruitcake in a long time - my husband asked for it and I thought of the dried fruit alternative. He liked it.

When I made fruitcake for my ex father in law, I soaked cheesecloth in bourbon and wrapped the loaves in the damp cloth and sealed them up in foil where they aged in the pantry for 6 weeks.

Buttermilk makes good cake!!! And biscuits And cornbread.....

[Ohiogal]

35. No one makes pizzelles here?

I make 2 kinda, anise and chocolate.

Several kinds of fudge, Russian teacakes, chocolate crinkles for sure. Than I make 3 or 4 different ones every year to round out the cookie/candy tray. The pecan logs filled with nougat went over well last year.

[Rorey]

36. I love pizzelles

I used to make them for my mother-in-law all the time, but when she died, somebody else inherited the pizzelle iron. I thought about buying one for myself, but nobody else in the family liked them as much as I did, so I'd just overeat.

[Marthe48]

38. I have some friends who make them

and they share

[yellowdogintexas]

42. My baking marathon has already begun.

I have a chocolate pound cake in the freezer for Thanksgiving with family. I will probably also take some homemade yeast rolls ready to pop in the oven

I am making a peach cobbler and a rum cake for a friend who is paying for them, as a donation to our local Democratic Woman's Club Scholarship fund. Those will be delivered Wednesday

By Dec 8th, I will need to make: cookies for our December Democratic Women's Club meeting
2 cakes to take to my Sunday School Class Christmas fundraiser (they will be on the Silent Auction)
a dessert for another Christmas party for our County Chair

The cakes will be pound cakes because they freeze well and transport easily. Maybe chocolate, maybe rum, maybe bourbon...who knows? The dessert may be tiramisu, not decided yet.
Cookies will be slice and bakes: Spicy Mexican Chocolate, brown sugar shortbread, Lemon, Those I can mix up and put in the freezer then slice and bake in one baking. I have rediscovered slice and bake (or as we used to call them ''refrigerator cookies" ) and am having fun discovering new combinations. I may make some vanilla ones and put crushed peppermint in them .

Every year at the Live Auction portion of the Sunday School party, I donate Special Occasion Cakes. I specify 6 cakes throughout the year, and the winners get to pick the kind of cake they want, when they need it. The bidding usually starts with a dozen or so bidding and when it is down to 6, that is the price all 6 will pay. I have 3 unclaimed cakes from last year's party, and one of them has just been ordered: it will be Italian Cream Cake which I'll get to her by the 19th. I am certain one of the families will want a carrot cake as they always do and the other one will be some type of pound cake.

I won't bake much after that unless I get a special request while we are in Phoenix. I'd love to make a big ole Southern coconut cake with pineapple in between the layers and a big jug of boiled custard but probably won't.

When I was growing up, we always made a German Chocolate Cake, a coconut cake and a jam cake. When red velvet became trendy I made that a time or two. To this day, those cakes always taste like Christmas in Kentucky to me. I also crave boiled custard around this time of year.

[yellowdogintexas]

46. Update on the baking Marathon

the score so far:
1 chocolate pound cake for Thanksgiving
1 chocolate pound cake for nephew's 21st birthday
1 rum cake for Democratic Women scholarship fund
1 peach cobbler " " "
1 Bourbon cake for Sunday School Silent Auction
1 Triple Chocolate Kahlua pound cake for Sunday School Silent Auction
1 Italian Cream Cake (purchased at the 2017 Live Auction) delivered today
1 Espresso Gingerbread poundcake (also from the 2017 auction) delivered today

Still to be made:
1 carrot cake (the recipe I use makes 2 10" layers)
1 chocolate pound cake
These are going to the same family, and were purchased at last year's auction.

I may try to bake a Limoncello cake to take to Arizona; a friend gave me a bottle of Limoncello that she made and I have been dying to make this cake. Kind of depends on what my daughter wants. We are taking my Nordic Ware pan which makes a little village of 6 buildings with us. My daughter and her sister in law will enjoy decorating the little houses I may make them with the coconut cake recipe so I will get my coconut cake after all!!!

This time of year I always do a lot of this. It is a lot of work but I really enjoy it; good therapy after this wild ride of an election year.

[Marthe48]

47. OH my goodness!

It all sounds so good. I have 3 more cookie plates to give. Almost done making and baking. Merry Chirstmas and Happy New Year!

[Marthe48]

44. Update and an aside

I've decided what I'm going to bake. I'm going to make rum balls, and make my own vanilla wafers. Also making elegant almond bars, which call for a pouch of sugar cookie mix, but of course no one has it, so I'll try making a batch from a recipe and wing it. Baklava, brown sugar fudge, spiced walnuts, chocolate chips, gingerbread, teacakes. Unbaked cookie dough.

I'll bake rolls and make 2 batches of tofu jerky.

I've had my own kitchen for 47 years. In my kitchen, I have at least one item from several female relatives. I already passed along a cast iron skillet my Swedish great-grandmother on Dad's side used, a cast iron skillet my Mom's mother used. I use a pot I got from John's grandmother to make candy. I also have a serving dish from her, and a serving bowl from John's Mom. I still have my Swedish great-grandmother's meat platter. I have my Mom's milk bowl, but it is retired. It was great for raising bread dough and I used it for years. I love having and using things my parents and grandparents used. And I like knowing that they will continue to be used at least a little while longer.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!