Merry Christmas, and our Gingerbread House

I hope you all had a great day yesterday and that you had fun with family and friends!

We had our annual family gathering earlier this year for our gingerbread house, and I'll show you some of what went on.

My brother decorated quite a few chocolate molds for inside and around the house. His attention to detail is amazing, isn't it!

As we did last year, we decorated the inside of the house so that when you peered inside the windows you can see some of the chocolates. Besides the "wooden" floor, we put up a string of Christmas lights, a wreath, and a chocolate lamb went next to the tree (not pictured).

This is what the house looked liked after all the walls were assembled, but before we finished the roof, the outline of the house (piped with frosting stars and lined with iridescent sugar pearls), and the board the house sits on.

And, voila! For the roof, I made various sizes of pizzelles using the pizzelle maker I received a while back. We then brushed on thin, melted candy coating that had dots of colors in it and sprinkled the tiles with white sanding sugar.

Our house wasn't complete, of course, without the nativity scene. Mom built the log barn using pretzel sticks, made Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus, plus the lone shepherd. It's really pretty cool to see!

If you look inside the door you can see the Christmas tree. My brother was really proud of that rug, by the way.

We won! For the second consecutive year! We ran into some trouble at the beginning, but once we were past it we just kept going until we finished and brought it in.

Hope you enjoyed looking!

more Christmas food prep

Yesterday I blogged the beginnings of our Christmas food preparations, starting with the panettone and finishing up with pie dough. After that we decided to only make bread stuffing, so there are the onions and celery. That means we have more of the bread to eat.

Look at how I'm staring down those cookies. This is serious business, cookies.

I have some notes to make about these cookies. The first is that the dough was extremely easy to work with, rolling it out and all. Just make sure you dust the counter, the dough, and the rolling pin with flour or confectioners' sugar, also the cookie cutter you use.

My initial impression was that the dough was light and flaky, yet the butter flavor was tempered by the ice cream. As the only sweetness in the dough came from the ice cream you might think it wouldn't be sweet enough. To a person with a big sweet tooth it might not, but I found it to be a nice level especially when you factor in the blob of jam in the center, practically pure sugar.

Now here is where I started being amazed. You see, the dough was beginning to develop that certain elasticity that comes when the gluten has overdeveloped by overworking the dough. I figured the subsequent batches would be rather tough and chewy instead of light, flaky, and delicate. Instead, while the shapes shrunk in diameter, they rose astoundingly high. I attribute this to the dough being unintentionally folded as you would do when making puff pastry or any sort of croissant-like dough. I like the smaller stars better. Delicate-looking, cute, and layers of flaky goodness.

Christmas baking (prep) check-in

Hello! I thought it would be fun to keep you guys updated on the Christmas baking and cooking happenings of the Running Foodie kitchen. (I'm also using this as an excuse to get away instead of going into cooking overload.)

We start with a panettone, the classic of any Italian household. A rich dough consisting of eggs, butter, honey, and lemon flavoring (both extract and zest was used here), this dried fruit-studded delight is a must for the Christmas holiday. I've been making one for at least 2-3 years. This time I used the recipe from Artisan Baking in 5 Minutes A Day instead of from The Bread Book, and I did this to work it around my schedule. I'll see what we think.

Here is the dough for the white bread we use to make the stuffings. This recipe comes from the Baking with Julia cookbook and produces a loaf that will keep you off the Wonder Bread for life.

And here they are, in all their golden brown glory! You will see these later on after I slice and cube them.

No, not pie dough, this is for an ice cream cookie. The recipe calls for cutting the butter into the flour, then mixing in ice cream.

I halved the recipe, otherwise I'd have used an entire pound of butter and a pint of vanilla ice cream. As it was, I used 1 stick and 6 tablespoons butter because that was what I had leftover from the pack of butter I opened for the pie dough. It seems to be fine.

Doesn't it look like pie dough, though? You mix and mix and mix until eventually the dough turns from curd-like pieces to a giant cohesive dough ball. It will require refrigeration. I swear I could use this as a pie dough, but I won't bother until I can experiment at a later, stress-free date.

Ice cream cookie dough. Next time I might try a different flavor of ice cream.

Now compare this to...

Too similar.

All that dough in the first picture plus a half batch (not pictured) is enough for two double-crust pies and one open-face pie, an apple pie, cherry pie, and a pecan pie, respectively.

I used the Julia Child recipe, using both butter and shortening. I've made pate brisee and various other recipes, but I feel like this one gives me the taste I want in a crust, and I've made it enough that I don't have to guess as to how it will turn out. The only change to the recipe is that I added 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar.

Panettone update. (The panettone was started last night, and the white bread was made last night as well; everything else was made today.)

All done for now. Whew!

Hope you guys are getting along and having fun with your baking! Try not to stress out about any interferences. Earlier today I spilled some coffee and instead of lingering on it I just cleaned it up. I did have to wash my apron (because you can't get an apron messy, right?) and then I decided to dry it, which made it shrink a bit. And the edges look to have curled under because the edging tightened and the main apron fabric didn't or something. But it's a pretty apron I got for my birthday that I will have my picture taken in and posted in the next update. All aprons should be this cute because it makes any kitchen disaster better.

Enough rambling. Here are the links to what I've made, and let me know what you are up to, as well!

Panettone"
White bread from Baking with Julia ~ my mods were to use 1/4 cup butter as stated in original recipe, and I added two tablespoons at a time because I wanted it to go quicker; not sure if it actually did or not since it seemed to require a bit more time kneading.
Julia Child's Best Pie Dough ~ I made this by hand in a giant bowl since the food processor isn't large enough. Also, I used more water than they called for, it may have been my kitchen or something.
Ice Cream Kolacky ~ Can't wait to see how these come out!