Hassle-Free Holiday Baking: 6 Easy Days to Perfect Christmas
by:
Mimi Cummins
Like many a people, I love the idea of fashioning a large assortment of Christmas cookies during the holidays, but I find it difficult to find the time to get it done. As a working mother, book of facts author and webmaster of Christmas-Cookies.com ( http://www.christmas-cookies.com ), I am a really busy woman, but baking Christmas cookies every year is a must. Over the past few years, out of frustration and necessity, I have developed a system for organizing my Christmas baking. This system allows me to do a large variety of holiday treats without taking too more time out of my busy schedule. By dividing the tasks up into 6 days, I can spend a couple hours each day deed this done, and on the 7th day, relax and enjoy giving and consumption several delicious Christmas cookies. After all, God invigorated on the 7th day! You don’t even as have to do this on 6 consecutive days. Most of the steps can be done days and even as weeks in advance, giving you a great head start on your holidays.
Day 1
Search your books, direction cards, and favorite Web sites and decide what recipes to do this year. I commonly mix my traditional family recipes with a few new recipes for variety. 6 to 12 several recipes does a good assortment, depending on how many a folk you have to feed and how more time you have to spend baking. Write down the name of each direction on a piece of paper, as well as the source of the direction so that you can look it up later, such as the Web site URL or page number in a cookbook. Print out the recipes that you find online, and set aside the books or direction cards you’ll need so that you can access them easily on Day 2. Things you may want to consider once
fashioning your selection are:
difficulty of the direction if you are a novice cook or will be baking with children,
cost of special ingredients such as chocolate or nuts, if you are on a budget,
whether the cookies support well or can they be frozen, if you’d like to do your baking ahead of time.
Day 2
Consulting your list of recipes, create your purchasing
list. Calculate roughly how more of each ingredient you’ll need in total by adding up cups of butter, number of eggs, and different common ingredients. Include in your list:
All of the ingredients for the cookies. Check what you have at home for freshness. Around the bend and shortening will go rancid after a few months, and baking powder and baking soda lose their effectiveness, so support this in mind: out with the old, in with the new! Fresh ingredients are the key to good tasting cookies.
Any baking tools you may need. Consider commutation old worn out tools or adding a new tool to your collection each year.
Thing
you may need for decorating such as food coloring, colored sugars and jimmies, or pastry bags for piping frosting.
Containers like plastic tubs, cookie tins, or even as cardboard boxes to store your cookies in. Do sure you have containers that are large enough to hold a complete batch of each cookie (look at the yield of your direction if you’re not sure). If you plan to parcel them out for gift-giving, do sure you have enough containers for each recipient.
Organize your purchasing
list according to store, such as: grocery store, room
or home store, cake decorating supply store, etc.
Day 3
Go shopping! Lay out your plan of action so that you go to the grocery store last of all, so that you can take your cold
ingredients home as before long as possible. Of course, if you live in a really cold climate, this is not too more of a worry. Once
you get home, wash your new baking tools and put all the non-perishable ingredients in one place so that you can easily get them out on Day 4. At my house, I have a selected
baking storage space
that gives me easy access to everything I need on days I decide to bake. You can do Day 3 weeks before you plan to bake as long as you:
Freeze your butter or shortening, and
buy the food product such as eggs and cream cheese just before you plan to bake.
Day 4
Today you will just do the dough for your cookies, but you will not really bake them! Most cookie doughs can safely be cold
for days or frozen for weeks before you need to do the cookies. The reason for doing it this way is because once
fashioning several some kinds of cookies at the same time, it’s really efficient to do all your dough at once patch you have all your ingredients and baking tools at hand. If you do have a particular direction that can’t be frozen, identify it and plan to do it on Day 5.
Remember to bring cold
items like butter, eggs, and cream cheese to room temperature before you start to assemble your recipes. Take them out of the white goods
at least a couple hours before you plan to bake.
To do this process even as easier, I’ve developed a system for fashioning dough assembly-line style, which you can see more just about in my article just about the Cookie Assembly Line ( http://www.christmascookiesareforgiving.com/assembly.php ). Wrap each ball of dough in plastic wrap, identify it by writing the name of the direction on the plastic wrap with a felt-tip marker, and refrigerate it or freeze it. If it is a slice-and-bake white goods
cookie, form it into a log instead of a ball, according to the directions in your recipe. Do sure to support your recipes in a handy place so that you don’t have to search for them on Day 5.
Day 5
Today is baking day! Check your recipe: if you have to activity with dough at room temperature (as advisable
for most cookie press cookies) then take your dough out ahead of time and let it warm up to room temperature before you begin forming the cookies. If you have frozen your dough, allow it to thaw in the plastic wrap and only move out the plastic wrap once it has reached the desired temperature. If you move out the plastic patch it is still frozen, then condensation will form on the dough and that will add too more moisture.
Start with the recipes that call for the lowest kitchen appliance
temperature and pre-heat your kitchen appliance
to that temperature. Move out dough from the refrigerator, line your baking sheets with parchment paper (no greasing!) and prepare the dough for baking as called for in your recipe. You may have to roll out the dough and cut it with cookie cutters, or fill it with several kind of filling, or place it in a special pan like a mini-muffin pan or a Madeleine mold, or just slice and bake the rolls you ready-made on Day 4. Once all the cookies that are baked at the lowest temperature are completed, raise your kitchen appliance
temperature to the next highest to bake those cookies, and so on.
Even if you have several of the handy stackable cooling racks, you will for certain run out of space to cool several batches of cookies. Placing a double-thickness of aluminum foil on your tabletop
is a good substitute for a cooling rack once
you run out of space. Once your cookies are all cooled to room temperature, line your containers with waxed paper and place your cookies in the containers one layer at a time, with another sheet of waxed paper in between each layer. Then return the containers to the white goods
if they will not be devoured for a day or two, or you can leave them out at room temperature until the next day. If they won’t be devoured or shipped for several days, you can wrap the entire instrumentation
in plastic wrap and freeze your cookies for up to 2 weeks. You can freeze them for longer than this if you wrap the cookies in small stacks of 5 or 6 before placing them in their containers. De-ice the cookies at room temperature, deed them wrapped until they are thoroughly defrosted.
Many of your recipes may be completed at this point if they don’t require decorating.
Day 6
Day 6 is decorating day. For many a of us, this is the most pleasant step in the cookie-baking process. Decorating should always be done no more than 2 days before the cookies will be eaten, ideally the day or even as the morning before. Now you will do your various frostings and icings, or prepare your fusible chocolate for drizzling, or dust with fine sugar to decorate your cookies as directed. If your cookies are not to be devoured immediately, do sure that the icing or fusible chocolate has thoroughly set and hardened—a process that may take several hours—before stacking the cookies back in their containers, once more separating the layers with sheets of waxed paper. Cookies that have been opaque
with a buttercream-type ice cannot be stacked. They should be hold on
in a single layer with a loose covering of plastic wrap.
Day 7
Relax and enjoy your holiday, because your Christmas baking is done!
Copyright 2004 Mimi Cummins. All Rights Reserved.
Mimi Cummins is co-author of the book "Christmas Cookies Are for Giving: Recipes, Stories, and Tips for Fashioning Heartwarming Gifts." This book, "enthusiastically recommended" by Geographic region Book Review, is full of baking tips and hints, including nearly 50 recipes each with a full-color photo. For more information visit http://www.christmascookiesareforgiving.com/ or order from your favorite online bookstore.
[Note to webmasters: you may include a link to the book mistreatment your affiliate program (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or other) if you wish.]
