Holiday Sweets Recipe Exchange
Onesome: Holiday Sweets-- What is your favorite holiday sweet? You know, the one you only really can get your hands on once a year?
It's not that I can't "get my hands on" it, it's that I just don't make it--my mom's wine biscuits. She used to do them on Easter, too, but I just do them on Christmas. There were several things I used to look forward to during the Christmas holidays: Mom would make molasses cookies, butterballs, and almond bars. I liked the molasses cookies best. I tried to make them once, but I think we got our wires crossed when she recited the recipe to me on the phone. All I got was this brown goo that literally did stick my fingers together. I had to wash them under hot water with dishwashing soap to get them free.
I also remember my aunts would have some hard candies I liked at Christmastime; they only seemed to sell them then. These were candies in the shape of small slices of lemon, orange, and tangerine, with wrappers that were images of the real thing. I used to wish they'd make lime. I didn't care for the lemon ones much, but the orange ones were great, and the tangerine ones actually did taste like tangerines.
The one Italian treat I did not look forward to that everyone else did was torrone. This is a soft white nougat candy with nuts in it, formed into a small rectangular, bite-sized bar. I always thought it was too sweet. The wrappers were always cool, though: they had a small drawing of a little Italian hill town on the front and were done in bright colors.
Twosome: Recipe-- ...and can you get the recipe for it? ...or is this one of those closely guarded family secrets handed down mother to daughter. ...and hey? What about us guys? How are we ever supposed to figure out how to do this stuff? ...or should we even try <g>?
James bakes all the time--ask him about his mods to the "Splenda and spice" cookies.
Okay: here's the wine biscuit recipe, as stated on my Christmas web page:
Since we were Italian, we didn't have anything as trivial as sugar cookies when we baked for Christmas. Instead we had molasses cookies, almond bars, and my favorite, wine biscuits. The latter are, in the British sense, a crisp cookie, not a dinner bread. Wine biscuits can be purchased in many stores that sell ethnic or Italian food, but the commercial ones are usually too crumbly and have dyes added to them to make them look red or purple. Ugh. Mom's recipe provides a firm, crunchy cookie with just a faint sweet taste of wine.
The ingredients:
Dry
4 cups of flour
3/4 cup of sugar
3 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
Wet
1 cup strongest burgundy wine you can find (hearty burgundy is best)
2/3 cup of oil
Using a large mixing bowl (ceramic Italian salad bowls work as well), mix the dry ingredients first, then add oil and water to a "bowl" you have made of the dry mixture. Using a large sturdy spoon, mix ingredients until they begin to stick together. Then you must knead the mixture by hand until it is completely mixed and smooth. Do not overknead! If the dough is sticky, add a little flour; if it's dry, add a little wine. End product should be a smooth, slightly shiny mass of dough with a "pebbled" type surface. If the wine you bought is dark enough, it may have a slightly purplish cast. Make a "loaf" of this completely kneaded dough and set it on a slightly floured surface so it won't stick.
Slice a piece of the loaf off and roll dough into a tube the width of your index finger (if you have large hands maybe the size of your pinky finger) and at least twice as long; the tubes should be made into doughnut shapes around 2 - 2 1/2 inches in diameter (you may have to cut off or lengthen tubes at times). Make sure the ends are "fastened together" if you want nice round cookies. Place cookies on cookie sheet covered in wax paper and bake in oven at 325 degrees until brown on the bottom. (Check after 20 minutes and turn cookie sheet around. Let it go another 10 minutes, then keep checking.) (I like them burnt on the bottom but that's just me being odd.)
You can make the wine biscuits look more attractive by mixing up one egg in a small bowl and using a small basting brush to brush the egg on top. This leaves them with a nice shiny glaze.
Threesome: Exchange-- But if you do have that recipe and you can bear to share, why not stop over at the exchange and drop it off? Barring that: do you routinely exchange sweets at holiday time? Yeah? What kinds?
Not really, and especially not this year since James was diagnosed with diabetes in the spring. We tend to exchange corn casserole with people instead. (Hi, Alex!)
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