What To Set Out for Santa

I might be suffering from technical difficulties.  I am woefully unaccustomed to Internet Explorer.  I had thought I was linking to my pictures,  but it seems I am not and, frankly I’m tired.  After knitting late until the wee hours of the morning (not necessarily a bad thing as I finally got to see The Science of Sleep, which I had wanted to see in the theaters but every time I tried to see it was sadly sold out so I gave up) and still finding myself miles away from where I should be, I am exhausted.

But I took a break to make some cookies and prep some more chocolate gingerbread for Christmas.  The oven will largely be occupied by a turkey most of tomorrow, unfortunately, so I definitely had to get dessert out of the way. I’m quite glad with how the cookies turned out.  These were the Cranberry-Pistachio Cookies I was tinkering with last weekend (was it really only a week ago?).  They’re a little more cakey than the first version and quite tasty.  Despite the fact that my mother had just slandered all vegan baked goods as “dry” (not just mine, Native Foods’s carrot cake was caught up in the broad sweep), she seemed to have no problem choking down a few all the while offering advice – this might be the appropriate time to point out that my mother has never baked a cookie that didn’t come from a package in her life.

Pistachio Cranberry Cookies (Makes 16)

* Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Sift together: 

1.5 c. sorghum flour

1/2 c. chickpea flour

2 tsp. xanthan gum

1 tsp. baking powder

Cream together:

1/2 c. Earth Balance

1/4 c. + 1 tbsp. non-hydrogenated shortening

1 1/2 c. brown sugar

* Then add

1 tbsp. lemon zest

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 tsp. almond extract

1/8 c. soymilk

* Add dry ingredients to the wet, plus:

1 c. dried cranberries

1 c. shelled pistachios

* Combine well.  Uncooked dough should be able to hold shape when pressed together.  If it does not, you might need to add a splash more liquid.

* Roll dough into balls containing approximately 1 tbsp. worth of dough.  Flatten on the cookie sheet and cook for 10-12 minutes.

I’m actually a little sad I can’t show the progress of my Christmas gifts as I’ve been working my tail off and yet still seem to be getting nowhere  (but there is always my flickr stream for the curious until I’m able to get things working on this end).  I think I’ve been crafting into a black hole.  It’s possible I’d be a little further along if my mother would leave me alone long enough for me to finish her gift, but she can’t because she’s a little obsessed with my company.

Not Frantic Yet

Normally nothing would make me happier than a large plate full of tater tots, but I had heard rumors that Whole Foods had waffle fries. Apparently, that would be the Whole Foods in Long Island only, unless there’s hope for the Bowery location. I had to have instant something, though, so I went for tater tots instead. On day 1 of Christmas Crafting for the Family they were a bit of a let down, but they weren’t supposed to be my prime focus. My grandmother’s lap quilt was:

I didn’t have the time to spare to move the pieced bits off of my bed, so yes . . . I slept on my grandmother’s quilt. Fortunately, this is not one of the evenings I slept on a sewing needle. Or a crochet hook. Or scissors. Or knitting needles. Clearly, I need to stop crafting in bed.

Christmas Miracle?

I firmly believe in bookending my years with a nice healthy bout of delusion. This delusion usually tends to manifest in list form. While January’s resolution list tends to contain one or two things I accomplish (I learned to crochet this year. Maybe next year I’ll actually learn how to read a crochet pattern.), my holiday present to-make list tends to require a Christmas miracle for completion or, at the very least, understandable Disneyland employees who let me enter the park with my needles on Christmas Eve so I can finish my mother’s cardigan in front of her. The fact that I was much further ahead this time last year has me a shade concerned. Granted, last year this time three-quarters of my craft corner and half of my apartment wasn’t in boxes in anticipation of a move that still hasn’t happened. I know that there will be problems ahead, however, as I don’t even know what everyone’s getting yet . . .

Hard Crack

Apparently I shower long enough for several dollars worth of sugar, corn syrup and cornstarch to go from “soft boil” to “hard crack.” After staring at my newly acquired candy thermometer, patiently waiting for the temperature to rise to 270 degrees, I decided I would be there for a while and really ought to shower because I decided “pulling taffy” would be a miserable excuse for being late to work yet again. It seems that’s all it took for the temperature to get a move on it, and by the time I stepped back out of the shower it had risen over 100 degrees, making my sugary mass no good for anything other than hard candy. Had I set it up accordingly. I didn’t, because I wanted to pretend as if those 30 degrees really made no difference, so I popped it into aluminum foil, still suffering from the delightful fantasy that I could turn sugar that should be soft crack but wasn’t into anything pliable. I do now accept the fact that I have been saddled with a rather tasty door stop.

Lump of coal cookies.

Wodgy

When Nigella used the word “wodgy” to describe her chocolate gingerbread in Feast: Food to Celebrate Life, I knew instantaneously what she meant. Isa’s Fudgy Wudgy Blueberry Brownies in Veganomicon are definitely wodgy. Any good chocolate dessert is wodgy, really. (Except that all good brownies are required to be a little crispy in places they’re not wodgy, too. I know many disagree, but I love edges.)

The thing of it is, making something both gluten-free and vegan at the same time is definitely a trial and error situation. Not to mention that, from the moment you read a list of recipe ingredients on a page, it’s easy to formulate an idea in your head as to what you think the recipe should taste like. I should have bore in mind the truth that chocolate is a flavor bully, not unlike green peppers and onion. Strong things like mint and raspberry (and I suppose I should say orange even though my brain does not really register orange as a food, outside of those mostly orange-free jellied orange slices my daughter-craving neighbor used to feed me as I cleaned her fish tank and learned to sew Cabbage Patch Kid clothing and watched every Hayley Mills movie known to mankind) tend to hold their own. Ginger normally does, too, but I will be the first to admit that I expected the classic gingerbread spices to resonate a little more boldly.

Unlike the slight fall suffered by my mini loaves, the spices are more of a matter of taste than that of veganization/de-glutening, so those will be simple to adjust. I think I’ll probably cut back on the Earth Balance a touch in the final version to balance out the fat, and hopefully minimize sinkage. You can’t really see it once the loaves are glazed, but it just seems as if I should fix it anyway to be thorough. I’m reluctant to cut back too much on the EB, though, because I want to make sure they stay wodgy. So, bearing my caveats in mind, this is the current recipe.