Life of Wry

Been a good, messy week of baking.  Wrapped most of it up tonight, prolly.

Brought back two favorites: Silver Palate’s Butter Balls (or Russian Tea Cookies), which is my all-time favorite cookie (just so you know) and a simple rocky road recipe. (I’d tried a couple different rocky roads this year and went back to a tried and true.)  I do these recipes a lot.. they are both so good.

Tried a new almond brittle recipe this week that was very simple, easier than my past Williams-Sonoma peanut brittle recipe (though that was exceptional), but it came out kind of putty colored.  It tastes great though, so I think I’m going to try covering (or just dipping) it in melted chocolate tomorrow to distract from the color.  We’ll see.

Also tried a new flourless chocolate cookie.  Kind of insane.  Bittersweet chocolate and ground almonds, mostly.  Densest dough ever that you chill overnight then form into balls which you roll in granulated sugar before baking. After baking, you dust with powdered sugar. They come out light and chewy and rich.  And are very, very chocolaty.

I was starting to feel badly about adding to people’s holiday stress by baking a bunch of sweets nobody needs.  But Jim said nobody would want a tin of carrot sticks.  So I shall press on.

Here are a couple pics:

Butter Balls:

Chocolate Cookies (this is the first test batch.. the subsequent batches look better b/c I sifted the sugar over the cookies and baked them on silpat which made their shapes just perfect) :

I’ll show you the candies tomorrow.

Favorite holiday thing: the Home for the Holidays concert. Eight or ten performances and a huge range of music with just a tinge of holiday.  That above is Bill Edwards.  I think Peter was mesmerized by his coolness, especially since Bill is Peter’s best friend Jack’s dad.  Peter doesn’t have such cool parents.

A few more pics:

Chris Webster (from Mumbo Gumbo) sang with Tracy Walton (also from Mumbo Gumbo) and Bill. All the sets were short, but this one was WAY too short.

This is Hattie Cravens, Joe’s daughter.  Ridiculously talented little thing.

The Davis High Madrigals did a set. Gorgeous.

Joe Craven’s trio included professional drummer Jeffrey Minnieweather (wow).  He also backed up the Fabletones.

These were the only pictures that turned out, otherwise I’d have included Little Charlie and Rita Hosking, both of which were crazy good.  Well, all of it was good.

This was the 8th annual, and except for the year we were in Brazil over Christmas, we’ve been to all of them. Looks like they’ll continue for a long time.. so go next year.  It’ll be your favorite holiday thing, too.