Posted on 11/29/2016 4:18:07 PM PST by Jamestown1630
I was watching a baking show on the Food Network and two people made Christmas cupcakes that resembled spaghetti & meatballs. The baker that prepared them said Italian-Americans always made that on Christmas Day. My husband, of Sicilian descent, said there was always a pasta dish served first but in his family it was lasagna or manicotti.
Naturally, this year I cooked the stuffing outside the breast and in a casserole dish. It came out amazingly delicious. But I always baste it with turkey fat while cooking it and moisten it with chicken broth. Since I spend all my time outside of culinary school dicing veggies for practice, this year I tumbled tons of carrots into the stuffing. No bad!
Wait.... what happened to:
“The Feast of the Seven Fishes, also known as The Vigil, is an Italian-American celebration of Christmas Eve with meals of fish and other seafood.”
I’ve been to several Italian Christmas Eve dinners, one Sicilian, and both times it was the Seven Fishes meal. Fish calzone was outstanding.
Never saw meat or cupcakes though.
Mexican-Spiced Chocolate Crinkles:
1 box of Devil’s food cake mix
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp. vanilla
Sugar/confectioner’s sugar for rolling
Preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl, stir cake mix, cinnamon & cayenne together. Add the oil, eggs, and vanilla until a dough forms**
Shape dough into 1 inch balls. (If too sticky, refrigerate the dough for up to an hour.) Pour sanding sugar or confectioner’s into a bowl and roll the cookies in it. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet, two inches apart.
Bake cookies for about 8 minutes (check on them). If they overbake, they are only good for dunking.
**I found this recipe very nice but ended up adding up to a full cup of flour to make these cookies have a decent structure for handling. So see how it goes. Easy and my husband really liked them. The cayenne gives a tiny bit of heat but nothing fierce.
That’s Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day. Always fish the night before.
Cupcakes were part of the competition on tv - not part of Christmas.
missed by that much.
;>)
That soup sounds so good! Pinging you tubender
tube - recipe at post 12
Thank you, Max.
Thank you for the video. I was most definitely doing that the hard way!
I found a recipe for making a kind of french-toasty pudding/strata out of one of those Pannetone cakes. I’ve never had that, and wonder if they’re like hot cross buns?
Left-over pannetone makes great bread pudding or French toast! I used to make it myself using old coffee cans. Maybe I’ll try it again but I’m thinking English food for this Christmas - although, again, I will not be cooking at home this year. But the week prior, I’m going to make an English Xmas dinner.
I’ve wanted to try real plum pudding; but real, fresh suet is hard to get. I’ve thought of trying something like Atora, which you can get mail-order, just to see how it works...
I really think your palate has to be accustomed to suet. My husband ordered beef and kidney pie (made with suet) at Rules, the best traditional restaurant in London. He’ll eat anything and although he was warned by our British friend, Rodney, he plunged right in. He could barely finish his meal. I tasted it and although it had a distinctly gamey taste, it was obviously made with great care. So, personally, I stay away from suet. You may have a more intelligent palate, though.
Laurie Colwin has an hilarious chapter in her book “Home Cooking” about serving Sussex Pond Pudding made with suet to her guests one night. Not a success!
I once tried that inside out method trying to follow the video and I was doing something wrong - couldn’t make it work for me.
I may try your method - I have just been pushing the duvet inside the cover and grabbing the corners, pulling them down inside, and then getting the corners on the upper portion and shaking it. I have three beds here with duvets so I have to do this a lot.
Well, the only plum pudding I’ve had is the canned one from Crosse and Blackwell (which is very hard to find now!) and which I always thought was a reasonable facsimile of ‘traditional’. But looking on the web, I don’t see suet in the ingredients - just partially hydrogenated oils.
I will have to look for more recipes.
Those little clips that Yaelle posted look like a good idea; it seems like you just iron them on.
Yes, we used to get Crosse & Blackwell at Xmas. I’ll look for one for you. If I see it I’ll gladly mail it to you.
Thank you! But there are several brands available on Amazon, and at the import stores. Walker’s even makes one, which I didn’t know.
When our local Giant Food store was still a family-owned business and ‘Izzy’ Cohen was running things, they had so many nice specialty items like this. Then it was bought by some big European company, and a lot of the special stuff disappeared.
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