Baking Madness

So, each year since James and I have been together (except for the year we flew to Texas for Christmas) we've made something edible and yummy for Christmas presents. My theory is that if a gift is edible, it doesn't obligate the reciever to reciprocate, but is also adequate as a return gift in the event that the reciever does indeed present a gift. Safe. The year we were engaged, we made fudge. We had to stick to the marshmallow cream type, because the one attempt I made at the authentic version ended up more like thick frosting than anything solid. Last year it was truffles. Except for a minor meltdown when I spilled chocolate all over the kitchen rug, it was a success.

This year was bread. I waited until after our Class Cookie Party and made lemon-cranberry-walnut bread, pumpkin-gingerbread, eggnog bread, apple-cinnamon-oat bread, and lemon-poppyseed tea bread in mini loaves for gifts to family and friends, as well as two loaves of German stollen bread (like fruitcake) for Christmas Eve breakfast. We turned one of the loaves (the one I subsitituted the fruitcake mixture for raisins, cranberries and walnuts) into yummy bread pudding for Christmas morning breakfast.

But the piece de resistance was the Buche de Noel, a chocolate jellyroll frosted to resemble a Yule Log, complete with rosemary garnish and merengue mushrooms. I was so impressed with myself that I had James ask our photography-savvy neighbor Will over to take some "food porn" pictures of it, posted below. We took the cake to my parent's Christmas Eve gathering, and I felt appropriately lauded on my pastry chef aptitude. And it tasted good, too! A pound of butter in the frosting alone will do that, in my experience.




So I think I'm baked out for the year. No more pastry work until 2008.