Holiday Goodies

Fall always symbolizes new beginnings; fresh school supplies, cozy scarves, and the celebration of the Jewish New Year.

Traditionally, we eat apples and honey which represent a sweet new year. For the next 10 days I try to incorporate honey into most of what I cook. And lately, I have been turned onto raw honey and I am loving the results.

Whether you celebrate this holiday or not, a honey cake is a wonderful way to end any meal. Drizzle some chocolate glaze over the top and you will have your kids (as well as the spouse), begging for more.

When I worked in a gourmet retail store as a teenager, I got a chance to try many delectable things. I sampled high quality chocolates imported from Europe, pistachios from Iran, Alice Medrich's mammoth truffles, and panforte made by Margaret Fox of Cafe Beaujolais. I'll never forget those heavy round thick loaves, wrapped in dark red or green cellophane. Thin chewy slices served with or tea or alongside cheese seemed so sophisticated. It was definitely the best fruitcake I ever tasted. 

My parents made panforte too and last year I realized it would be the perfect thing to make with a surplus of candied lemon peel. My recipe uses rice flour instead of wheat flour, which means it is gluten free! If you have nuts in your freezer, and they weren't bought this season, they are probably from last season and now is a good time to finish them off.

These just scream Christmas, don't they?  I wanted to show you this recipe to give you plenty of time to include this in your holiday entertaining.  I love cranberry desserts at the holidays - they are so pretty, with the cranberries looking like little jewels. These phyllo baskets are simply scrumptious and you can make the components of these ahead of time, making it a breeze to assemble right before you want them.

I've had this recipe for years, way before you could buy prebaked phyllo baskets in the grocery store.  If you absolutely don't have time to make the phyllo baskets yourself, you could use the frozen kind. I've never tried them, so I cannot tell you if they are any good. But if you buy phyllo sheets and make your own little baskets, I guarantee they will be wonderful and crisp and light and so worth the small effort it takes to make them. And you can make the baskets way ahead of time and keep them at room temperature.  The filling and topping are practically afterthoughts, they are so easy.

Butter season. It's here. The inside of the door on my freezer holds several pounds of Land O Lakes butter. Many more of the 1-pound boxes are stacked on the shelves in my refrigerator. My holiday baking has begun.

Baking Christmas cookies is one of my favorite things in the whole world. There's nothing that puts me at peace during this crazy busy time of year like getting into the kitchen to do some baking while Christmas music plays in the background. Maybe it's because I think of the many years my mom and I baked holiday cookies together. When I make the thumbprint cookies, a family favorite for generations, I can almost hear my mom tell me to roll the little balls of cookie dough no larger than a walnut. Now I use my small portion scooper and each cookie is the exact same size. She would have loved that little tool.  We would stay up until all hours of the darkness to bake hundreds of special cookies that had become a tradition through the years.

I stll make many of the same cookies my mom and I created each holiday season. But, each year I find new ones to try. I have a stack of clipped cookie recipes that I flip through each November, pulling out a couple that will become newbies on the cookie tray. Some of those become keepers and are tucked into the "Keep Forever" file. Others are half-heartedly consumed and are never found on our holiday Christmas cookie platter again.