Christmas discovery

Sawyer was amazingly uncurious Christmas morning. He wandered past this bizarre, hulking thing several times, and Chris finally had to tell him, "I think Santa left this for you; why don't you take a look!" As you can see, it's a totally awesome and shallow gift, good for cheap thrills and not much else. Bring your kids over if they want to try it!

Happy Little Boy

A glimpse into Fielding's winning disposition:

Christmas Train!

Tonight’s holiday activity: Christmas train at the orchard town center!We’d tried to do this two weeks before, but got there after the train had stopped running. But this time: success! The little thing chugs around the mall for about 15 minutes, sending toddlers into a wish-fulfillment swoon.

 

Afterwords we had promised Sawyer that we would drive around a little to see Christmas lights, because he’s a little obsessed with them. We found this insane Christmas house in the neighborhood south of ours. When we stopped to take this pic there were three other cars circling to admire. I have really mixed feelings about this kind of thing (energy use being the foremost concern), and yet somehow I am as thrilled as Sawyer when I see such a bombastic holiday display.

 

Holiday Baking is done!

Ooo, look at these rows and rows of sugar-dusted and chocolate drizzled puffs of holiday light and cheer!

 

Here’s an example of the plates that Sawyer and I put together with all the goodies that we made. See recipes below, if you’re interested.

     

On the top left are Pfeffernusse: http://www.vistawide.com/german/christmas/pfeffernuesse_recipe.htm

To the right of that, Peanut Butter MnM cookies: http://www.familycircle.com/recipe/cookies/holiday-peanut-butter-cookies/

Next is the chocolate gingerbread cookie that was previously posted.

Below that are pecan crescents (supposed to be hazelnuts, but I couldn’t get them!): http://www.familycircle.com/recipe/cookies/hazelnut-crescents/

To the left are my favorite dark chocolate fudgy cookies, which you can find on my now mostly defunct cooking blog )-: http://pregnantladycooks.blogspot.com/2010/02/dark-chocolate-valentine-cookies.html

And in the middle are peppermint meltaways: http://www.landolakes.com/recipe/2720/peppermint-meltaways

Wrapping paper project

 

One of our Christmas craft activities this week was to make homemade wrapping paper, and then do a little gift wrapping. So I got rolls of poster paper at the Hobby Lobby and Sawyer helped me pick out a bunch of holiday stamps. Toddlers detest well-ordered art, preferring randomness to predictability, which you can see from this small sample of our stamping project. But he loved it, and we made just enough to get all of Chris’ presents wrapped.

And how cute does this look under the tree?? Brown paper packages tied up with string…

 

Here is our tree, btw.

 

Chocolate Gingerbread Men Recipe

As requested:

3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2/3 cup cocoa powder, sifted (preferably natural cocoa powder)

1 tablespoon ground ginger (not more than 2 months from purchase)

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

2/3 cup vegetable shortening

1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed

1 large egg, room temperature

3/4 cup unsulphured molasses

 

1 Position racks in the top & bottom thirds of the oven, then preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

2 With shortening (not on ingredient list) to grease several large baking sheets, then set aside.

3 In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, baking powder & cloves until spices & coca are evenly distributed, then set aside.

4 In a 2nd large bowl, & using an electric mixer on medium speed, cream shortening & brown sugar until smooth & airy, about 1 minute.

5 Beat in egg & then the molasses.

6 Turn off mixer & add prepared flour mixture, then AT VERY LOW SPEED beat just until crumbly bits of dough form, but not until the mass begins to cohere into a ball.

7 With flour lightly dust a clean, dry work surface as well as your hands.

8 Turn dough out & knead just until it forms a smooth mass, about 30 seconds.

9 Divide into thirds & cover them with a clean kitchen towel.

10 With flour lightly dust the work surface again & roll one of the thirds to a rectangle about 1/4 inch thick. Flour the dough & a rolling pin only as necessary.

11 Use a large gingerbread-man cookie cutter to cut the dough into the desired shapes, then use a metal spatula to transfer them carefully to the prepared baking sheet(s). Gather any scraps, lightly dust again with flour & roll out a 2nd time, creating additional gingerbread men.

12 Decorate the cookies with the raisins & red hots, using one for the eyes & the other for the mouths. Additional red hots can be used as buttons on their coats.

13 Bake for 4 minutes, then rotate sheets top to bottom & front to back.

14 Bake another 4 minutes, or until cookies feel dry but still are a little soft.

15 Remove from oven & cool on the baking sheets for 2 minutes before transferring the cookies to wire racks to cool completely.

16 Cool the baking sheets for 5 more minutes, then regrease them before baking additional batches, as necessary, OR work with 2 additional baking sheets, preparing them while the others are in the oven.

For royal icing with meringue powder: beat 4 cups powdered sugar, 2 tbs meringue powder, 1 tsp vanilla and 6-8 tbs water on medium high for 7-10 minutes until soft peaks form. Add food coloring and thin with water if necessary. If using pasteurized egg whites, sub 3 oz. egg whites for powder and water. Beat whites and vanilla until frothy before adding sugar, then beat 7-10 minutes.

Making Gingerbread Men

Today’s activity advent adventure was to make and decorate gingerbread men—sounds a lot like gingerbread houses, but we chose to do chocolate gingerbread, for one, and then opted to decorate exclusively with frosting, no candy this time. I’ve actually spent a lot of time expressing how much I loathe rolling out dough and cutting cookies, going to the extremes of hyperbole to express what I’d rather do than make cut-out cookies, but, in truth, IT WASN’T THAT BAD. So I take back everything I’ve ever said about it. It was even kind of fun (she says sheepishly), though maybe only because the cookies got thicker and thicker with every batch, which means I probably unconsciously cut my labor by a third.

On an unrelated note: I LOVE MY MIXER. Few things (by ‘things’ I really do mean inanimate objects) are bringing me as much joy this month as my beloved Kitchen-Aid. What a breeze it is to whip up several batches of cookies and finicky frosting like royal icing. Thank you, Ebay, for helping to make my mixing dream come true. SO, here we are making the dough, which was, I confess, entirely TOO snackable.

  

And….the requisite shot of the chocolate-faced kid. Chris is all: “when are you going to stop doing that? oh, here’s his face covered in chocolate! and here’s his face covered in spaghetti sauce! and here’s his face covered in XX…!” When it stops being funny to me, I guess. Or when Sawyer becomes self-aware enough to notice that he has chocolate all over his face and therefore becomes less messy, which will be kind of a tragic hallmark of adulthood.

 

While S napped I did the aforementioned rolling and cutting…

…and baking.

  

Now we’re all suited up with our bags of colored royal icing. Sawyer was making a hell of a mess of my icing bags until I had the idea to put a rubber band around each one at the top of the icing bulb.

He started with minimalist technique—monochromatic, simple squiggles.

And then he became possessed by the sheer joy of squirting colorful sugar-ooze over everything in sight, and adopted a more expressionistic tactic.

Things went downhill from expressionism to what I’m calling “wide-scale botched autopsy.”

  

Here are all my little guys, dressed in technicolor duds. See if you can find the one in the leisure suit and the one with the hippy shawl.

 

GUUUUUUTS.