Breathtakingly beautiful! Congratulations on his scholarship award.!
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Thank you
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Thank you. Hes a great guy.
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That is stunning! He’s obviously learned from the best! Congratulations to him on the scholarship as well.
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That looks delectable. Please tell him we’re very proud 
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A day and a half til our Xmas open house.
Cookies made:
Dorie’s jammers
The gingersnaps for gingersnap-and-orange-buttercream sandwich cookies (WaPo)
Dough portioned and frozen:
Pan-banging ginger molasses cookies
Pan-banging red velvet cookies
I’ve been in the kitchen since this morning (made a literal vat of vegetable crab soup, as well as a full-size stollen cake from “Nature’s Candy,”), and am about to make a couple additional things tonight:
- these chocolate-ginger cookies
- another half-batch of the cardamom snowdrops (this time with spice in the batter, as well as more spice in the coating)
I’ve got candied peel soaking for tomorrow’s batch of “Nature’s Candy” fruitcake cookies, I’ll probably make ginger shortbread, and I’ll shape and par-bake my meatballs tomorrow as well.
Holy moly.
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Holy Moly, indeed! How are you still standing?!? This sounds like a wonderful array of treats.
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my legs will be screaming tomorrow, i’m sure.
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Beautiful cake, impressive scholarship! Congratulations!!
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Wow, that will be one amazing party!!
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Jason Schreiber’s “sesame rings that look like taralli”. These are taralli with the addition of tahini and sesame seeds, which might offend the sensibilities of Italians who are sticklers for tradition😆.
This is probably the most tedious thing I’ve made. My brother and SIL are flying over for Christmas along with the kids and I found myself wishing maybe I’d saved this endeavor for their visit because it would go so much faster with a couple of people rolling into ropes and shaping into rings, and another doing the boiling and rolling in seeds.
I thought his shaping process seemed more troublesome, with cutting strips and rolling into long ropes and then cutting again before shaping. I preferred to just portion all the dough and roll each out. I don’t think ultimately it would make much difference in terms of time, because you’d have to spend more time to get the long ropes thin enough, and I think mentally I just prefer to know I’ll work on each one once and be done with it.
I started with 15 g ropes, but eventually went with 10 grams. Of course it just depends on how big you want the taralli, and obviously bigger ones make the process faster.
I felt these could use a little more salt. The addition of tahini I think needs to be taken into account, plus the coating of seeds. I’d go with 2.5% rather than his 2%. The taralli I used to eat were always pleasantly salty.
The plain ones (I ran out of seeds, which was the goal when making these) are okay on the salt, but a little more would still improve them imo. The tahini isn’t very noticeable on the uncoated ones, so it could just be left out.
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Your amazing
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Big thanks to those of you who mentioned the Pardon Your French website. It has me enthralled.
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Heres another website that i think is good but haven’t cooked or baked anything from it .
About 23 hours from the party. I spent most of the day getting my hair did, but now I’m back in my bakin’ outfit and back in the kitchen. Here’s what’s goin’ on:
- finishing baking the chocolate ginger cookies, half the batch (freezing the rest)
- baking King Arthur’s excellent candied ginger shortbread, which I have both home-candied ginger (!) and a pretty pan for
- making Camilla’s fruitcake cookies
then - bake off the frozen red velvet cookies, so I can decorate them in the morning
- mix and par-bake the meatballs
- sugar some cranberries
Tomorrow, I will:
- decorate the choc ginger cookies and the red velvet cookies
- bake off party-quantity of the the pan-banging ginger molasses cookies
- prep the veg, meat and cheese for the nibbles platter
- finish some of the meatballs for the early crowd (doors open at 3) and warm some soup
- put out the chips and dip
- re-shower my stollen cake in more powdered sugar and decorate
- PROFIT!
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You are so ambitious!! Hope everything goes smoothly and a wonderful time is had by all!!!
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I want to make the shortbread, do you score before baking to make it easier to slice? Some comments say bake 5 minutes less, do you?
i just put it in the oven. i didn’t score it but i did dock it, as directed.
as long as you cut it hot, it’s not hard to cut.
UNLIKE BISCOTTI
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i just got EXTREMELY DISTRACTED FROM BAKING because when I was coming in from an emergency groc store run, i saw a drone. then i saw three. then i saw ten.
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So, not the “just small aircraft, not drones” line we’re reading elsewhere? All the news that fits (is on our baking website). Weird if they’re really here to steal your trade secret candied ginger techniques. Or a group setting up a coordinated Christmas lights show for your event.
