Holiday Goodies

Horns for the Holidays

More than twenty years ago, when my Auntie Elinor was living in Riverside, Illinois, she began sending me the special holiday cookbook that her local newspaper published. It was packed with all kinds of recipes that readers had shared. I always loved reading through its pages.

One year, as I read through the recipes, I came upon an interesting cookie called Horns. Tender pastry dough, rich with butter and sour cream, is rolled out thin and sprinkled with a cinnamon-sugar-nut mixture. Wedges of dough are rolled up and baked. The dough is very nice to work with and rolls out very easily. If you haven't had a lot of experience with pastry dough, this is one you'll want to try. It's very user-friendly.

Make your topping real good

Have you seen the Reddi-Wip commercial that’s been running on television? They’ve timed it to run this time of year when pumpkin pie is being jotted down on the planned menu for many Thanksgiving Day cooks. Every slice of creamy pumpkin pie needs a dollop of topping, right?

In the commercial, a woman is seated at the counter at a diner. When she orders pie, the waitress holds up a can of Reddi-Wip in one hand and a plastic tub of topping in another. “Oil or cream?” she asks.

The viewer knows very well the plastic tub represents the light-as-cotton candy whipped topping that can be found in the freezer case at all supermarkets. And, no matter what brand it is, the frozen topping is usually referred to as Cool Whip.

When Cool Whip was introduced to the public in 1967, my mom went nuts over the whipped cream look-alike. My mother, who grew up eating real food on a farm in Indiana, snubbed the thick liquid cream as she marched right past the cartons of thick white liquid on the shelf in the dairy case and headed straight to the freezer, tossing a couple of plastic tubs of frozen whipped topping into her grocery cart.

Party of the Year

As each time zone in the world welcomed the new millennium, twelve people in a little flat in San Francisco celebrated with a unique dining experience.

The New Year’s Eve feast began at 4pm Pacific Time with long-life noodles and caviar tarts, as Sonja, her husband Dave and their guests joined a few billion people who were still partying in Asia and Russia.

Then, every hour on the hour, wherever it was midnight, they served assorted bite-sized cuisine indigenous to countries where the 21st century had just begun.

Recipe of the Week: Sugarplums

Since it's Christmas time, I chose to make Anita Chu's Sugar Plums recipe. Anita writes in her Field Guide to Candy, "When visions of sugarplums dance in children's heads, it would be interesting to know exactly what sugarplums they dream of." She explains that historically "sugarplums," referred to a wide variety of candies, but more recently have come to refer to "soft, sticky balls of dried fruits and nuts, often rolled in shredded coconut or confectioners' sugar. They do not necessarily contain plums."

According to Anita, "Sugarplums were immortalized in Clement Clarke Moore's poem "A Visit from St. Nicolas" and "Tchaikovsky's Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker." Hence our association of sugarplums with Christmas.

Sugarplums
(Recipe from Field Guide to Candy by Anita Chu; Quirk Books, 2009)

2 cups almonds, toasted and roughly chopped
1 cup dried apricots
1 cup pitted dates
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons grated orange zest
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 tablespoon honey
Unsweetened flaked coconut for rolling

Line a baking sheet with parchment or wax paper.

Combine almonds, apricots, dates, cinnamon, and zest in a food processor and process into a finely ground mixture. Add orange juice and honey, and combine until the mixture becomes a sticky ball.

Pinch off pieces of the mixture and form into 1-inch balls. Roll in coconut. Place on the baking sheet for about 1 hour until firm.

Notes: You can substitute the fruits and nuts in this recipe. Dried cherries, figs, or raisins work well, as would hazelnuts, pistachios, or pecans. Try adding chopped candied ginger or candied citrus peel.