holi-daze 2025: xmas prep, phase 2
Dec. 23rd, 2025 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skye_writerImagine, please, that I have flopped into a colorless void of a room, wearing a t-shirt that says "I survived my self-inflicted holiday bake-a-thon and all I got was this stupid t-shirt (and also lots of cookies)".
I made it. I don't feel like my sanity is wholly intact, but I made it!! I also made peppermint bark, 2 dozen plain shortbread cookies, 2 dozen orange spice shortbread cookies, and 40 Mexican wedding cookies, not to mention chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream for a chocolate cake. It took five days in total, but I did it.
The chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream was maybe the most difficult thing on the list? I ended up wasting 2 egg whites, either because I messed something up or because I wasn't patient enough, I do not know which. I tempered the whites, started whipping them on my stand mixer, and they turned glossy and white, but were still soupy as hell. After like 10 or 15 minutes of whipping. So I poured them down the sink, washed all the needed dishes I'd put in the sink, and started over.
I had the same problem a second time, but decided to wait it out and keep whipping the damn egg whites. It took something like 40 whole minutes to get them to the desired volume and stiffness. This after thoroughly wiping down every bowl and utensil with vinegar to get rid of fat residue. The recipe said whipping the whites to stiff peaks would only take "1-2 minutes", but apparently I don't get that kind of courtesy from my egg whites. (And honestly, it could have been the fucking humidity in the kitchen!! I don't know!!!)
Anyway, the buttercream turned out delicious, so there's that.
The peppermint bark was easy, thank god. Melt the bittersweet chocolate, add peppermint extract and salt, spread it on a tray, melt the white chocolate, spread it over top of the first, swirl artistically with a skewer, add peppermint candy bits, and put in the fridge to set. Break it into pieces and store it in a bowl in the fridge! Easy!!
The shortbreads were rather time-consuming, it turns out. They also involved rolling out dough for cookie cutters, which I am notoriously bad at. (I tend to roll too thin, which makes for very crisp cookies that are maybe not as delicious as they could be.) That said! I managed to get the hang of the rolling out eventually. Both batches of dough yielded 2 dozen cookies each, which I cut into stars, snowflakes, and scallop-edged rounds. I made the plain shortbread on Saturday, and then dipped them in a simple glaze on Sunday and decorated them with colored sanding sugar. The orange spice shortbread was baked on Sunday, and yesterday I dipped those in an orange glaze, and decorated them with orange zest and gold and silver sanding sugar.
The Mexican wedding cookies were also time-consuming, a little? (Yesterday was kind of all over the place, to be honest.) Though the nice thing about these cookies is that you bake all of them at the same time--all 40 of them, on two different baking sheets. They also had to be rolled in powdered sugar twice after baking (though I kept a half-dozen aside to stay plain for my Dad, who likes cookies but is also type-2 diabetic).
But now! Everything is ready!!! I just have to get all the cookies (and the bark) sorted into treat bags and into the plastic tins I got, and then all my efforts will be complete!! There will probably be leftover cookies, too, so I might enjoy some of those today as well. :D
My parents and I also sat down yesterday and got pretty much all the gifts wrapped and put under the tree! So we are pretty much ready for Xmas!! My brother and SIL and Dearest Nephew are coming up tomorrow afternoon, and it's gonna be a good time!! :D
I made it. I don't feel like my sanity is wholly intact, but I made it!! I also made peppermint bark, 2 dozen plain shortbread cookies, 2 dozen orange spice shortbread cookies, and 40 Mexican wedding cookies, not to mention chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream for a chocolate cake. It took five days in total, but I did it.
The chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream was maybe the most difficult thing on the list? I ended up wasting 2 egg whites, either because I messed something up or because I wasn't patient enough, I do not know which. I tempered the whites, started whipping them on my stand mixer, and they turned glossy and white, but were still soupy as hell. After like 10 or 15 minutes of whipping. So I poured them down the sink, washed all the needed dishes I'd put in the sink, and started over.
I had the same problem a second time, but decided to wait it out and keep whipping the damn egg whites. It took something like 40 whole minutes to get them to the desired volume and stiffness. This after thoroughly wiping down every bowl and utensil with vinegar to get rid of fat residue. The recipe said whipping the whites to stiff peaks would only take "1-2 minutes", but apparently I don't get that kind of courtesy from my egg whites. (And honestly, it could have been the fucking humidity in the kitchen!! I don't know!!!)
Anyway, the buttercream turned out delicious, so there's that.
The peppermint bark was easy, thank god. Melt the bittersweet chocolate, add peppermint extract and salt, spread it on a tray, melt the white chocolate, spread it over top of the first, swirl artistically with a skewer, add peppermint candy bits, and put in the fridge to set. Break it into pieces and store it in a bowl in the fridge! Easy!!
The shortbreads were rather time-consuming, it turns out. They also involved rolling out dough for cookie cutters, which I am notoriously bad at. (I tend to roll too thin, which makes for very crisp cookies that are maybe not as delicious as they could be.) That said! I managed to get the hang of the rolling out eventually. Both batches of dough yielded 2 dozen cookies each, which I cut into stars, snowflakes, and scallop-edged rounds. I made the plain shortbread on Saturday, and then dipped them in a simple glaze on Sunday and decorated them with colored sanding sugar. The orange spice shortbread was baked on Sunday, and yesterday I dipped those in an orange glaze, and decorated them with orange zest and gold and silver sanding sugar.
The Mexican wedding cookies were also time-consuming, a little? (Yesterday was kind of all over the place, to be honest.) Though the nice thing about these cookies is that you bake all of them at the same time--all 40 of them, on two different baking sheets. They also had to be rolled in powdered sugar twice after baking (though I kept a half-dozen aside to stay plain for my Dad, who likes cookies but is also type-2 diabetic).
But now! Everything is ready!!! I just have to get all the cookies (and the bark) sorted into treat bags and into the plastic tins I got, and then all my efforts will be complete!! There will probably be leftover cookies, too, so I might enjoy some of those today as well. :D
My parents and I also sat down yesterday and got pretty much all the gifts wrapped and put under the tree! So we are pretty much ready for Xmas!! My brother and SIL and Dearest Nephew are coming up tomorrow afternoon, and it's gonna be a good time!! :D
