Like many people, I like the idea of an assortment of Christmas cookies during the holidays, but it is difficult to find time to do it. As a working mother, cookbook author and webmaster of Christmas-Cookies.com (http://www.christmas-cookies.com) are a very busy woman, but baking Christmas cookies every year is a must . In recent years, due to the frustration and anguish, I developed a system for organizing my Christmas baking. This system allows me tobring to a wide variety of vacation is not taking too much time on my calendar. Dividing the tasks in 6 days I can spend some time each day always done, and 7 are days, relax and enjoy delicious food Christmas cookies. Finally, God rested on the seventh Tag! Nor is this on 6 consecutive days. Most steps can take days and even weeks in advance, giving an advantage on your vacation.
Day1
Find your books, recipe cards, and favorite Web sites and decide which recipes to make this year. I usually mix my traditional family recipes, recipes with some new varieties. 6-12 different recipes makes a better choice, depending on how many people will be food and how much time you spend cooking. Write down the name of each recipe on a sheet of paper, and the source of the recipe so that their eyes later, as the URL of the Web site or page in a seriesCookbook. Print the recipes are online, and set aside the books or papers you need this recipe that are easily accessible on Day 2. What you can control the selection when it was taken:
-Difficulty of the recipe, if you are a beginning cook or bake with children,
Costs for special ingredients such as chocolate or nuts, if you're on a budget
-Whether to keep the cookie or can be frozen, if you want your oven made outTime.
Day 2
Consulting the list of recipes, create your shopping list. Calculate the approximate amount of each ingredient you need in total by adding up cups of butter, the number of eggs and other common ingredients. Include in the list:
-All the ingredients for cookies. Check what you have at home for freshness. Nuts and shortening will go rancid after a few months ago, and baking powder and baking soda lose their effectiveness in mind: Out with the old, inwith the new! Fresh ingredients are key to good biscuits taste.
Each bakery tools you need. To replace old worn tools or adding a new tool to your collection each year.
-All it takes what can be for decoration such as dyes, sugar and colored jimmies, or pastry bags for piping frosting.
Containers like plastic cups, boxes of biscuits on, or boxes to store your cookies in achieving secure containers that are large enough for a completebatch of each cookie (look at the yield of your recipe if you're not sure). If you plan to parcel them out for gift-giving, make sure you have enough containers for each recipient.
-Organize your shopping list according to store, such as: grocery store, kitchen 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 refrigerated ingredients home as soon as possible. Of course, if you live in a very cold climate, which is not too much of a concern. When arrives home wash put your instruments cooking and again all ingredients nonperishable in one place so can easily released 4 Day. In my house I have a closet cooking indicated that my easy access to everything I need on days I decide to cook. You can do Day 3 weeks before you plan to cook until:
-Let your butter or shortening and
Buy-perishable products such asas eggs and cream cheese just before you intend to cook.
Day 4
Today there will be only the dough for cookies, but you will not actually cook! Most cookie doughs can safely be refrigerated or frozen for days to weeks before you need to create the cookie. The reason this is so, because if several different types of cookies at the same time, it is very effective to make all your dough at once, while all the ingredients and cook at your fingertips. IfShe has a special recipe that can not be frozen, identify and plan for the five days doing.
Remember, refrigerated items like butter, to make the cream cheese and eggs to room temperature before you start to assemble your recipes. to take them out of the refrigerator for at least a couple of hours before you plan to cook.
To facilitate this process, I have a system for manufacturing paste-style assembly line, you can read about more developed in my article about the Cookie Assembly Line (http://www.christmascookiesareforgiving.com/assembly.php). Wrap each ball of dough in plastic wrap, identify the name of the recipe on the slide with a pen, and fresh or frozen. If it is a slice refrigerator cookies-and-cooking, forming a log file instead of a ball, according to the instructions in the recipe. Make sure to keep your recipes close at hand so that you do not have on the fifth day are looking for.
Day 5
Today is the day of cooking! ControlHis recipe: if you press the dough at room temperature (work mostly as Cookie is recommended), then take time for the dough and let it warm to room temperature before making the cookies should start. If you've frozen the dough, thaw in the plastic bag and remove only the film once it reaches the desired temperature. If you remove the plastic while still frozen, condensation forms on the dough, and this too will addHumidity.
Start with the recipes for the lowest temperature and preheat oven to call this temperature. Remove the dough from the refrigerator, line your pan with parchment paper (no greasing!) And prepare the dough for baking as called for in your recipe. You may need to stretch the dough to cook and cut with cookie cutters, or fill it with some kind of filling, or place it in a special like a mini-muffin pan or a Madeleine mold, or simply sliced and pan rollsHe made 4 days. When all the cookies that are baked at the lowest temperature are completed, raise the oven temperature to bake the cookies immediately above and so on.
Even if you have some of the practices of stackable cooling racks, you is not enough space to cool several batches of cookies. Place a double thickness of aluminum foil on the work plan is a good substitute for a cooling rack when you run out of room. Once cookies have cooled completely to room temperatureTemperature, line your containers with baking paper and place the cookies in containers one layer at a time, with another sheet of wax paper between each layer. Then again, the containers in the fridge if you have not eaten for a day or two, or you can leave at room temperature until the next day. If they are not eaten or shipped for several days, you can wrap the entire container in plastic wrap and freeze your cookies for up to two weeks. You can use it to freezemore than that if you wrap the cookies in small stacks of 5 or 6 before in their containers. Defrost the cookies at room temperature so that it wrapped until completely dissolved.
Many of the recipes can be resolved at this point, if you do not need decoration.
Day 6
Sixth Day Decoration Day. For many of us this is the best step in the process of cookie-baking. Decorating should be done no later than two days before the cookieeaten, ideally the day or the morning before. Now you are your different glazes and icings, or prepare your melted chocolate for sauce or powdered sugar to decorate cookies as directed. If cookies are not eaten immediately, make the chocolate icing or melted to be carefully set and cured - a process that can take several hours - before stacking the cookies back in Their containers, again separating the layers with sheets greaseproof paper.The cookies that are frosted with a glaze type can not be superimposed. They must be stored in a single layer with a loose cover of plastic wrap.
Day 7
Relax and enjoy your holiday, because your Christmas baking is done!
Copyright 2004 Mimi Cummins. All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment