Christmas Cookies 2019

  • I love baking. A big part of that enjoyment is the analysis and thinking about what I’ve made and how it could be done differently and better. Of course, I love eating what I produce, too, but really I like to learn how to make things better and better.

    Some people think that this analysis takes away from the enjoyment of the effort and product, but for me the analysis is part of the enjoyment and takes away nothing. Yes, I’m thinking about ways that something can be better, but for me this is a positive and hopeful process, and in no way is it negative or discouraging.

    I can happily scarf down a croissant (or two!) while making a long mental list of all the things I want to try to do better with the next batch. Most people will want to just enjoy the croissants without the analysis. A very few people might want to think about these things with me. This blog is for us.

  • The pandemic has afforded me the possibility of making the Ikeda Christmas Cookies two years in a row! Here are some thoughts:

    • I baked the Sugar Cookies without any kind of pan liner, using my very thin, metal spatulas. I suspect this is best for clean, even browning of these very thin cookies.
    • When making the Candy Cane Cookies, why do I always end up with more red dough than white dough? I’m reasonably sure there is some optical trick that makes me roll the red thinner than the white. You can see in the box of finished cookies where there’s a tiny red & white Candy Cane (blue arrow) and several all-red Candy Canes. I’m hoping that my new analytical balance will settle this matter next year!

    Look at all these wonderful cutters that I’ve accumulated over the decades! Many are thoughtful gifts from kind friends and family members, and some are inherited from my mom. The Ikeda sisters worked on these cookies at mom’s elbow for many years as little kids, and after we finished baking we would deliver them around the neighborhood.

    Finally: This was my attempt at making a coronavirus cookie… [sigh] And, this is a view of my Sugar Cookie workstation, offering a glimpse of my pandemic work environment and this year’s cookie-making binge-streaming fodder.

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  • Fresh mochi is a Japanese New Year’s tradition, and since there aren’t any good local sources for it here in the Boston area, I now make it myself. The mochi machine is really fun to watch, and I made this video of a key moment in the process… It’s a short (30 seconds) video, and if you watch with the sound on you will hear that things got even more exciting right at the end!

    The finished product:

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  • For complicated reasons, I drove out to Wisconsin and spent several weeks with mom, Jennifer, Michael, and Mac, despite Wisconsin being in a covid surge at that time. It was meaningful to be there with them, and I spent much of my time there sewing and baking. Here are the two pies I made: my classic apple pie and Joanne Chang’s Rich Chocolate Cream Pie.

    A few thoughts on these pies:

    • I have a consistent issue with my apple pies where the level of the apples sinks after the top crust has set, causing a big gap between the fruit and the top crust. You can see that in the photo. Even with macerating the apples in sugar for 30 minutes, it’s not enough to solve this issue. Next attempt will probably involve pre-cooking the apples.
    • I am very happy with my pie crust recipe, and keep returning to it despite trying several other recipes and techniques. The basic idea is that I use the New York Times all-butter crust recipe, but I use Joanne Chang’s “fraisage” technique. I did have success using Shirley Corriher’s technique of using a rolling pin to do the fraisage, but that method caused a tremendous mess in my kitchen, so I now stick with the regular fraisage by hand.
    • I seem to have been willing to make a fancy edge on the chocolate pie, perhaps because I didn’t have a fluted tart shell? I always follow the stated pâte sucrée recipe for this chocolate pie, and love it. It also appears that I made chocolate crumbs rather than curls!
    • It’s probably worth fessing up that I once made this pie and forgot to put the egg yolks and sugar into the chocolate custard filling. The resulting pudding/ganache (rather than custard) was still delicious (and one or two people preferred it!), so I now routinely cut back the number of yolks to 2 (from 4) and the sugar to 2 Tbs (from 1/3 cup). I do keep forgetting to bump up the cream and chocolate a bit to compensate for the loss in volume, but it’s not a big deal.

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  • This isn’t a post about baking so much as a post about why I have time to bake so much.

    For various reasons, I’m at higher risk of having a more serious case of COVID-19 if I should catch it. When school started in early September 2020, it was remote and I started the year teaching remotely. But, my school is considered “high needs” because its student body is 100% English Language Learners. There was significant public and governmental pressure for high-needs schools to get students back for in-person learning as soon as possible, so that meant my school was among the first to open.

    Though about half of the students opted to continue learning remotely, there were enough that teachers needed to report for in-person (“hybrid”) classes in October. My medical history made it unsafe for me to go back, so I took a pandemic-related unpaid leave.

    It has been incredibly painful and weird to not be teaching. For eight years, teaching is what I do and who I am. Even chamber music has had to take a knee for now. One bright light has been the baking. And now, back to that…

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  • I’m of the opinion that it’s important for scientists to publish studies that are “failures” (for many reasons, but that would be a different kind of blog post, right?), and I have to face that the same principle applies to my baking failures. I made these cinnamon rolls today, based on this Smitten Kitchen article and recipe (which, in turn, is based on a Bon Appetit 2008 issue). Through no fault of the recipe, I seriously overbaked these. I mean, they were just completely hammered. I can hear Paul Hollywood saying, “Overworked, overbaked, dry as a bone.” Of course, I still ate them, and they were still delicious, but definitely an overall failure.

    Here’s what I learned and what I want to remember for next time:

    • I think they could have come out as much as 10 minutes earlier
    • I used a non-cream-cheese glaze, which I happen to like, but was necessitated by my not having cream cheese and my not wanting to run out to get it (side note: I haven’t been going to any grocery stores during the pandemic, preferring instead to have necessities delivered)
    • I believe the technique of using a thread (or dental floss) to cut these is a seriously bad idea. It seemed, as I was doing it, that bits of filling were somehow jumping all over the kitchen. I didn’t think I was applying that much tension, but I kept hearing sounds of flying cinnamon sugar all over the kitchen. On the other hand, I don’t know how much better or worse it would be to try to cut them, so that remains to be determined.

    [Lastly, I’m happy to have a reason to post a photo of the beautiful baking dish that Stef gave me from Bennington Potters!]

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  • I like to read cookbooks and cooking magazines. An especially enticing article in Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Magazine got me temporarily obsessed with making quiche. I even bought a deep quiche/tart pan specifically for this purpose. I did the math and a 1/12 slice of this deliciousness was ~540 calories (including both creme fraiche and heavy cream!). As Prue Leith would say, though, it was worth every one of those 540 calories.

    However, Prue would also have noticed and disapproved of the soggy bottom at the center of the quiche. As instructed in the recipe, the tart pan (with foil and on a sheet pan because of leakage) was put directly onto the pizza stone that lives in my oven, but still yielded this soggy center. The next step would be to partially blind bake the crust, and/or place the tart pan with foil (no sheet pan) directly on the stone.

    Over the next few weeks I did make subsequent versions that cut back on the cream and creme fraiche (increasing milk), that tried my own pie crust recipe, and that tried my new Breville oven. But, the learning from all this was:

    • Don’t use the Breville, because the bottom didn’t get hot enough (needs the stone)
    • Don’t use my pie crust (too fragile)
    • It’s fine to swap out the richer dairy for milk
    • DO blind bake for 15-20 minutes, with LOTS of pie weights
    • Place the tart pan directly on the stone, but with foil for leakage (no sheet pan)
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  • While teaching remotely, I apparently found the time and energy to produce this amazing thing. I followed the New York Times recipe, and it was both easy and delicious. Sort-of like a gigantic popover. I wanted to wrap myself up in it…

  • Every year, Mike and Chris buy a big ham on Easter Sunday and then share a bunch of it with me. I then take the ham and, among other things, make a big dish of macaroni and cheese with ham. Here’s the 2020 edition. I like to make my mac & cheese quite spicy, with sriracha and a heavy-handed mix of powdered chili peppers.

    Thank heaven for April vacation!

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  • Viennese Crescents (pre-bake)
    Viennese Crescents (final)
    Wreaths (pre-bake)
    Wreaths (in process)
    Wreaths (final)
    Candy Canes
    Candy Canes (pre-bake)
    Sugar Cookies
    for Mac (the Black Lab)
    Sugar Cookies
    Candy Canes

    Being a teacher, which I have loved, is a profoundly exhausting and all-consuming profession. Not that working in bio-tech was a picnic, of course, but I have never felt as fulfilled or exhausted as I have as a teacher. On weekends and holidays – or even just at the end of each teaching day – I’d just sort-of collapse and need to let my mind and body recover.

    This didn’t leave much energy or time for the significant production that is the Ikeda Christmas Cookie scene. But in 2019 the school calendar happened to play out in a way that resulted in a rare two-week Christmas vacation, allowing me time to recover and then to bake like crazy. It was wonderful to get back to it, and to find the muscle-memory still intact, and to introduce a little bit of innovation.

    I now own enough silicone pan liners that I’m using them all the time. Unlike “air bake” pans, I think the silicone liners manage to avoid delaying browning – mostly. They definitely avoid sticking and are simpler than parchment, but I wonder if parchment would have been preferable for the sugar cookies, in terms of browning. With 2021 hindsight, and now that I own a box of pre-cut parchment, maybe I’ll opt for that this year?

    In an attempt to make the cookies as uniform as possible, I tried using my food scale to help, but the masses involved were too small and exceeded this scale’s ability to cope. So, I bought a lab scale that is specifically for smaller masses (no more than 200g) and I can’t wait to use it for the next Christmas Cookie production.

    Anyway, this gallery gives you an idea of the production that is involved. The Viennese Crescents trace back to a 1955 New York Times article that my mother must have discovered. They are, by my taste, the best tasting of the Ikeda Christmas Cookies, and also the easiest to make.

    The Wreaths are my next favorite to eat, and though they are very time-consuming to make, I love working with the eggy, delicate dough. I don’t know the provenance of that recipe, but I do vividly recall my mom explaining that the sugar needed to be fine green sugar and chunkier red sugar – so that the red sugar would look like holly berries on the wreaths. This is but one of many aspects of the compulsive Ikeda tendencies surrounding this affair.

    The Candy Canes, which are a recipe that didn’t come from mom (!) are, without question, the most time-consuming to create. I love their look more than their flavor, but I know some who prefer this cookie over the others. I once spent two hours preparing a tray of these at some ungodly hour of the morning only to then go and burn them. I cried, went to bed, then kept going the next day.

    The secret to the sugar cookies, which I learned from mom, is to roll them excruciatingly thin, and this is aided by dusting the rolling surface with flour mixed with sugar. This keeps the dough from getting bogged down (toughened) with too much flour. The compulsive need to put eyes on every cutout shape that should have eyes is entirely my own mental illness. Can’t blame mom for that one!

    [A keen eye might notice that one of the photos shows what I was streaming on the iPad while I was baking… ]

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