I have been fretting about my holiday baking. Usually I go completely overboard, which has resulted in our unofficial household holiday, "Trekking to the Post Office and Making Them Work". Wherein we take boxes full of goodies adding up to about $100 in postage to the post office and send them hither and yon. Then stop for cocoa and somebody else's baking on the way home.
This year I am not going overboard. Even before DH sat me down for a chat about how I should not try to do so much this year, I had figured it out and was fretting about it. Oh I can probably do some of the daintier things myself. I can no doubt manage some pressed cookies like spritz and what have you as well. However there are things that take a bit of oomph to manage. The gingerbread, the stollen, the fruitcake and one of the lebkuchen are at least beyond my lifting limit to say nothing of requiring a bit of strength to handle in their raw undivided into portions state.
I was looking over my recipes trying to figure out which I could safely delegate to DH or DD3, and which I could cut out entirely, when I had a brainwave.
I have decided to take on an apprentice or two. One gentleman of our acquaintance has been making noises about going to culinary school. Since he recently had to move back in with his mother I called her up and asked if I could borrow him for the holiday baking. I of course mentioned that I would be sending him home with some of the fruits of his labors. She indicated that she thought he would be delighted to help out, and if he wasn't she would beat him down to our house with an ox goad. And by the way would we be teaching him how to make orange marmalade or the cookies that taste like crunch berries? He later called to confirm that he would be happy to help. I told him to bring his mom if she would like to come along, and her boyfriend if he wanted to come as well.
With that success I have been thinking over the people we know and trying to think of who might have an interest, or at least be desperate to lay hands on certain recipes. I figure that we could have a couple of baking parties and so get the job done, and have fun at the same time.
Alas! The strawberry extract I use for the "crunch berry" cookies has been sold out everywhere I shop (Boyajian), so unless I can lay hands on some Fragoli or the other Italian strawberry liqueur the name of which is escaping me at the minute, there will be no crunch berry cookies this year. If you are wondering they are naught but those cookies that you fuss with to make pinwheels, or checkerboards, or what have you, with strawberry in them. I usually divide the dough, put vanilla in one half which stays white, and put the strawberry flavoring in the other half which turns it pink, then make pinwheels of it. Sometimes I add a drop or two of red food coloring to make the pink half pinker.
NightMist