Currently: December 21, 2007 link

Email from my parents:

"Yes, Erica, there is a Santa Claus.

Merry Christmas from the ol' man himself."

With attachments:

Christmas 1977:

Christmas 1979:

Christmas 1980:

I don't remember any of those. Merry Christmas!

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December 19, 2007 link

I am very much looking forward to a mellow Holiday this year. This is my last week of school and work before vacation so I can finally think about relaxing.

I decided at the absolute last minute that I was going to make some Christmas Goodies and I decided on:

Pumpkin Truffles
Peppermint Marshmallows
Clove Lollipops
Rosemary Caramels
Mini Gingerbread Loafs

I ended up only making the Truffles, Marshmallows and the Gingerbreads with varying amounts of success.

Marshmallows:
I used Alton Brown's recipe and Tivoed the episode where he made the marshmallows which was very helpful. I have also heard that using a recipe with eggs makes a wonderful marshmallow, but may not store as long, so I chose to not use eggs. I have also been trolling the eGullet boards for candy making and there are just a ton of tips for all sorts of confections.

I didn't take any pictures during the cooking and whipping because I needed all of my brain for the handling of molten hot sugar, so here we see the marshmallows after they have been made. I used my kitchen shears to cut them because I don't have a pizza cutter.

They get another dusting of powdered sugar because the sides are super sticky.

Et Voila! They are very good and overall they are incredible easy to make, I was surprised.

Pumpkin Truffles

My mixture was too runny I think. You use real pumpkin (canned) and dark chocolate. Also added orange liqueur. This ganache was VERY yummy. Now at this point you can roll the truffles into little balls and coat them in cocoa powder and what have you, but I decided I was going to get fancy and deviate from the recipe and use a tempered chocolate coating. Tempering is melting the chocolate and heating it to a certain temperature, cooling the chocolate to a certain temperature, and then reheating the chocolate to a certain temperature being careful not to go over a certain temperature. When you see people smoothing melted chocolate over marble, they are tempering chocolate. It makes it so the chocolate is glossy, harder to melt in your hands, and snaps when you break it. This is sort of where I ran into trouble and an emergency trip to the grocery store for a pound of chocolate put the train back on its track. I am pretty sure I still did something wrong as my chocolate didn't "coat" very smoothly. At any rate here is the final product:

I put a pumpkin seed on top when the chocolate was still warm. Here is a truffle cut open to see the contrast in textures:

It worked, sort of. The outside shell snaps when you bite into it and the inside is soft and smooth. They are VERY yummy.

Mini Gingerbread
The gingerbreads were a taste success, but an aesthetic failure. I filled the mini loaf pan holes too full, the bread was a recipe I wasn't familiar with, and they stuck to the bottom of the pans coming out so I have gingerbread crumbles instead of pretty mini-loafs. I should make a trifle or something because it tastes pretty good. I have never had actual gingerBREAD, and this recipe had real ginger, mustard, and cayenne (among the other holiday spices of course) and seemed very intriguing. I found it in The Tassajarra Cookbook.

I am overall very pleased with the day of candy making.

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