Just Desserts

The Christmas baking season is upon me. It officially kicked off last evening with run and gun baking spree in support of some silly charity. It's not that I believe in the cause, but I've been doing this for a couple of years now, so it's become tradition.

On the schedule were Cinnamon Buns, Ginger Sparklers and White Chocolate Macadamia nut cookes (with a twist). As usual, I'd procrastinated and put off work I should have done Tuesday. This called for some serious scheduling! Fortunately, nothing needed to be done start to finish. Instead, I was able to break things down into nice little tidy steps.

First came the dough for the cinnamon buns, since that needed to rise. Also, I hate working with yeast, so it was best to just get that out of the way. Fortunately, there were no major hiccups, so it was clean up and move on to the cookies. The ginger sparklers came next since the dough had to chill, and then the white chocolate chip cookies. I really do need to learn to not do rolled cookies for these things, and just stick to drop cookies. I have Serdmom's has a killer chocolate drop recipe, which is easy to make and doesn't require tons of rolling! One of these millenia, I'll learn... but probably not.

Moving along, the cookie doughs had been made, and cleaned up from. It was time to roll the cinnamon buns. Now, it's times like this that I really dislike our new kitchen. We have a tile countertop, which I'm not a fan of. It incorporates grout and where possible, I'd rather not have food touch it. So, while I ponder the merits of a pastry cloth, I have to settle for a really good, thorough cleaning before I roll anything on the surface.

So far, I'd spent three hours just preparing to bake. I'd not yet turned the oven on, and it was 10PM; the Singer was returning from rehearsal, and bringing her friend Pixie with her. They got to have really fresh, warm cookies and try out my White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Twist.

The twist is simple really. I swapped the macadamia nuts for dried cranberries. A little while ago, Presidents Choice came out with new cookie; All Butter White Chocolate Raspberry, and they retail for $2.50 CAD for 10 cookies. Honestly, they're not bad, but they are a store bought cookie, so you can veritably taste the preservatives. My first thought was that I could do better. Much much better.

To this end, I tried to find dried raspberries but was unsuccessful in my brief search and instead chose cranberries instead (mostly inspired by Nail's wife, Hammer who makes a mean White Chocolate and Cranberry Cheesecake). The first batch in the oven took a bit of adjustment. While I used some drier brown sugar, the cookies took longer too cook than usual, and it took a couple of checks to get it right. By the third batch, I'd had it figured out. 375 for 13 minutes instead of 350 for 9 minutes. And yes, they were much much better.

In fact, I was finally able to have one of these cookies, since I'd never had one when I'd used the nuts. It's a fairly sweet cookie, with a little bit of sour from the cranberry and a little bit chewy. All in all, that recipe is a keeper.

By the time the cookies had been baked, the cinnamon rolls had risen again and were ready for their own time in the oven. The rest is fairly anticlimactic; all said and done, the oven was turned off at midnight.