Monday, December 08, 2003
Work Party
Who would have thought cranberries would go so well with sweet cherries?
Over the weekend, we bottled our cranberry barbecue sauce. When we ran out of barbecue ingredients, we made cranberry orange sauce to pour over cakes. And when we ran out of oranges, we floundered.
But, hey, wait - we had cherry pie filling left over from Thanksgiving. Not enought for a pie, but maybe, if we filled it up with the cranberries?
And, of course, cinnamon had to go in, with a touch of cloves and some black pepper, and a pinch of cardamom. That made a yummy filling, but it was the finish that really made the pie - a hazelnut glaze.
While hte pie was still quite hot - fresh out of the oven, we mixed up a glaze flavored with powdered hazelnuts. The hazelnuts took some of the tartness out of the cranberry cherry filling, complementing it with a subtlety that the more forceful almond lacks.
sure, most people associate cherry with almonds, but we're here to say - try hazelnut.
For the holiday party at work, I'm going to bring this pie, the top decorated with 4 cut out swans and 3 pastry swans, and a "wavy" edge, and call it a "Seven Swans a Swimming Pie".
Then, it's home to bake cookies for Cookie Day, which will have started an hour before I get there.
We will make sugar cookies, gingerbreads, chocolate chips (with and without chocolate chips - have you ever had a chipless chocolate chip cookie? I love the flavor, with a hint of cardamom and chopped pecans...), spritz wonders, peanut butter, oatmeal, billy goats, pfeffernuesse, zimt sterne, merry makers, spice drops, nussecken, and more. Wonderful, yummy cookies. I'm glad the weather will be cold because the ovens will heat the house.
Ack! I will have to clean off all the tables - the 8 foot baquet table in hte library, the round breakfast nook table, the 5 foot buffet table, and borrow another 8 foot banquet table, not to mention all four card tables. That should be enough room to decorate all the cookes.
And hten the Cookie Frenzy will be over - until the Cracked Cauldron opens, and we'll be baking cookies daily.
