This is the first Christmas since my grandmother died, and I miss her very much. So I’m sharing another one of her recipes with you, this time a savory one, which she’d serve as an appetizer before Christmas dinner.
I’ve never made this recipe, but maybe I will this weekend. Looking it over, it seems like you could stretch the making of these out over several days, which is handy if you have several days with only a little bit of time to devote to cooking.
Mushroom Turnovers
(makes 2 1/2 dozen)
Pastry
1 1/2 cup flour
1 cup butter
1/2 cup sour cream
Cut butter into flour.
Stir in sour cream until pastry holds together.
Form into ball. Divide in half.
Refrigerate 8 hours.
Filling
1 lb mushrooms, chopped
2 Tbsp shallots, chopped
2/3 cup evaporated milk (Gramma notes this is the size of a small can)
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
2 Tbsp chopped parsley
Cook mushrooms 3–4 minutes.
Add shallots, salt, pepper, and milk.
Simmer 15–20 minutes ’til thick and [creamed? creamy?].
Will keep in refrigerator 3–4 days.
Assembly
Roll out 1/2 of your pastry to 14″ square.
Cut out circles with 3 1/2″ cutter.
Refrigerate scraps before re-rolling.
Place scant Tbsp of filling in center of each circle.
(Touch edge of circle with dab of water before folding over.) Fold dough over filling. Seal edges.
Cut slashes on top.
Place on ungreased cookie sheets.
Egg Wash
1 egg yolk
2 tsp water
Combine yolk and water.
Brush on top of turnovers with pastry brush.
Bake 350°F for 25 minutes.
Cool on rack.
They can be frozen for up to 2 months.
Today’s song is a favorite from growing up: The Statler Brothers’ “The Carols Those Kids Used to Sing”:
One of the things I’ve been doing this holiday season is watching the Great Holiday Baking Show, an American spin-off of the highly successful Great British Bake Off. Each week, contestants are tasked with creating 3-5 baked goods tied to three themed tasks, culminating in the “show stopper” challenge. This week’s episode centered on pastries, with the final task requiring bakers to use cream puffs in a sculptural dessert.
I can offer you no pointers on creating reindeer or Christmas trees with cream-filled pastries, but I can help you out if you think you might be interested in just taking on the puffs themselves.
This is my grandmother’s recipe. I don’t know where she got the recipe, but my guess would be a women’s magazine, unless Mum tells me otherwise in the comments. Cream puffs weren’t a Christmas dessert, but tended to be one she made in the summer, I think because my grandfather particularly liked them. She kept them in the fridge, filled, but if you’re going to make them ahead of time, I’d suggest storing the puffs unfilled at room temperature and then filling them at the last minute to avoid the sogginess that comes with leaving them in the refrigerator. (They still taste just fine; it’s just a less-enjoyable mouth-feel.)
While I love the idea of extraordinary desserts at Christmas, many of them just take a ton of time and energy to make or a lot of fancy ingredients you don’t have around the house. Cream puffs are surprisingly easy to make (although they do require an hour to bake, which is usually what does me in), and you probably have most of the ingredients on-hand already. Add cream and instant pudding to your shopping list, and you’re all set.
Cream Puffs
(makes 8 large puffs or 12-16 smaller ones)
Pastry dough (pâte à choux):
1/2 cup butter
1 cup water
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup flour
4 eggs
Preheat the oven to 375°F.
In a pot on the stove, heat the butter and salt in the water until the butter melts and the water boils. Remove from heat.
Add the flour all at once and stir until the mixture leaves the side of the pan and forms a ball.
Beat in the eggs one at a time.
Grease a cookie sheet and, using large spoonfuls, drop your dough in 8 balls (or more, if you want smaller puffs). (You may, like me, be tempted to taste the dough or lick your fingers in an unhygienic fashion, as if this is cookie dough. Do not waste your dough on that. It really isn’t fantastic raw.)
Cook at 375°F for 60 minutes. (When they’re done, they’ll slide right off that pan without even the need of a spatula.)
Immediately put the dough pot in the sink to soak with some soap. Baking shows never include clips of the poor grunt who has to chisel the pots clean at the end of the episode.
Cool completely. (This is another step I often skip, but, like refrigerating filled puffs, filling still-warm pâte à choux makes them a little soggy and tends to cause them to deflate a bit in an unflattering, if still tasty, way.)
Filling
(This is the part that makes me suspect a magazine was the source of the recipe. I’ve never made my own pudding or pastry cream to fill these, but you certainly could if you want to do something more fancy, although you’ll want a cream that’s pretty thick if you go your own way. You could also abandon this filling altogether and substitute ice cream, which would probably be delicious.)
1 small box chocolate (or your favorite flavor) instant pudding (I can’t find a box in my cupboard right now, but I think it’s 2-4 oz, depending on the maker; it will say that it makes 4 half-cup portions)
1 1/4 cups milk
1 cup cream
Beat pudding using 1 1/4 cups milk. (This will likely differ from the instructions on the box. Ignore the box.)
Beat cream until thick and then fold into pudding mixture.
Return to your now cooled pastry. You can either poke a hole in them and squeeze your filling in with a pastry bag (harder, but prettier) or you can go my grandmother’s far easier route and just cut each puff in half (using a sharp knife) and dollop in a good quantity of filling before putting the tops back on.
Today’s musical selection was performed 50 years ago today, when Gemini 6 astronauts Walter M. “Wally” Schirra Jr. and Thomas P. Stafford informed Mission Control they’d sighted what might be a UFO:
“We have an object, looks like a satellite going from north to south, probably in polar orbit…. Looks like he might be going to re-enter soon…. You just might let me pick up that thing…. I see a command module and eight smaller modules in front. The pilot of the command module is wearing a red suit.”
They then surprised their counterparts on the ground with this musical interlude, performed on harmonica and jingle bells:
This marked the first time musical instruments had been performed in space. (The instruments are on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum here in D.C. as part of the “Apollo to the Moon” exhibition.) You can read more about the event in the Smithsonian Magazine.
Raidergirl3 (who, incidentally, is running a new reading challenge, Once and Again, in 2016) hails from Prince Edward Island, home of our favorite red-haired orphan of fiction. So today, you get a holiday musical selection from PEI native Lennie Gallant, who penned “I Still Believe” for the documentary Santa Quest, about actor John Dunsworth’s quest to win the Santa Winter Games. (I haven’t seen the film, but Halifax’s The Coast Review suggests “It’s Bad Santa meets Jackass,” which may keep it off my personal to-be-watched list.)
Rankin/Bass productions are especially loved at this time of year, being known, as they are, for their animated and stop-motion children’s holiday programming. Many of you are familiar, I’m sure, with their first production, Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which first aired in 1964, and Frosty the Snowman, which came out five years later.
Less well remembered, however, is one of my favorites, the 1974 animated version of “‘Twas the Night before Christmas,” populated with humans and mice. ‘Twas the Night before Christmas pairs the poem with the backstory of how a town so pissed off Santa Claus that he declared he wasn’t going to visit and how the town reacted. (I think I won’t be alone in thinking that Santa doesn’t come off so well in Rankin/Bass productions, often seeming mean or vindictive or whiny.) The big name in this production, playing Father Mouse, is Joel Grey (who is not, I am surprised to discover right this moment the same Joel (Higgins) who played the dad on Silver Spoons), best known for originating the role of the Master of Ceremonies in both the stage and film versions of Cabaret. It also included, among others, comedian George Gobel, Tony winner Tammy Grimes, and character actor John McGiver.
Here’s one of the three songs, “Even a Miracle Needs a Hand,” featured:
And if you haven’t seen it in a while, the entire half-hour special is quite charming:
I can’t believe we’ve passed the halfway mark of the December advent season! Where has the time gone? But I know these first couple weeks are going to seem like they’ve lasted forever when compared to the final two.
Today, the Virtual Advent Tour will head to Handmade by Mikaiya, where Mikaiya and her blended household celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas at this time of the year. Check out her post, where she shares her Advent: Chanuka Version and includes a favorite Jewish holiday tune.
The holiday season isn’t the same without this favorite song, “Light One Candle,” from Peter, Paul, and Mary:
Since this is part of how I’ll be spending this weekend, I thought I’d update my 2010 post on how to create a great Christmas mix for this year’s Tour:
Christmas music is as intrinsic a part of my holiday season as is a tree or presents. Each year my family looks to see who has new holiday albums coming out and breaks out the old favorites from years past. Each of us has a pretty sizable collection of Christmas albums crossing genre and spanning a variety of delivery formats from LP to 8-track to mp3.
My dad has been making annual Christmas mixes for the last 20 years or so. He made a few Christmas tapes when I was growing up, but making it a yearly event definitely became much more feasible once you could build your playlist on the computer and then burn it to disc. Each year you eagerly look forward to seeing what he’s included on his holiday cd.
After making a few gift tapes myself back in college, I found the process to be a lot of work and stopped making mixes. But the allure remained and, after mulling it over for a couple of seasons, I finally started making Christmas mix cd six years ago. It’s a surprisingly involved process if you’re like me and prone to getting a bit obsessive about getting your mix just so. But I thought today, as part of the Virtual Advent Tour, that I could offer some insights into creating a Christmas mix that you and your loved ones will enjoy for years to come:
Start with a wide selection of music. It helps to have a collection of cds, records, or mp3s from which to draw. It is not imperative, however, as you can find plenty of holiday tunes online from which to draw. Clearly, free options are your friend, particularly if you’re starting from scratch.
Begin early. Prep now for next year. Just create a playlist labeled Christmas 2016 in iTunes or your preferred music playing program and dump songs you like there. Consider this your vault. It’s not too late to create one for this year, but if you want one done by Dec. 25th, don’t wait!
Song selection is key. Here are my rules. Obviously yours will vary by taste and inclination:
I like to keep it pretty even between male and female singers. That’s a personal preference because I definitely notice when a mix slants one direction or another. (Although, usually I find that if there’s a noticeable bias it tends to be toward the mix creator including a mostly male line-up.)
Shorter songs are preferable. Aim for roughly three and a half minutes per song. Older songs are usually shorter; more modern ones tend toward the five-plus minute mark. I’m not saying to exclude long songs, although I try to keep those to a minimum. Christmas songs tend to get a bit repetitive and the longer one goes on, the easier it is to get tired of it. Plus, if you choose to burn your mix as a cd and you pick long songs, you get to include fewer songs.
Include some artists you love even outside Christmas. Last year’s cd included Ellis Paul and Pentatonix. This year I have the Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. (I also try to include artists that relate to the past year in some way — I saw an act live or I’ve been watching them on tv or they’re local.) You might decide only to include artists you listen to year-round, but I tend also to add artists I’m not familiar with who have songs I find very catchy. A few years ago, for instance, I found a track featuring Tuvan throat singers performing “Jingle Bells†with Bela Fleck. I’d never heard of them until I came across that song, but it’s a fantastic twist on a familiar carol.
Find a balance between modern and traditional holiday music. By traditional I’m referring to songs everyone can sing along to. Marvin Gaye’s “Purple Snowflakes†is a song you can groove along to, but it’s not one that’s likely to get a carload of people singing along with it on first listen. But those unique tracks tend to be ones that people remember because, honestly, nearly every singer with a Christmas album has done a version of “Silent Night.†(I also like to throw in an instrumental or two. If your audience’s attention has wandered, a lack of vocals can help recall it to your mix.)
Once you’ve assembled a collection of songs you like, it’s time to start playing with them. First, if you plan to burn a cd, know your target number. With a cd, you have 79 minutes to play with. If you’ve picked mostly longer songs, that’s probably 15 tracks. If you’ve gone with shorter pieces, you could get 20 or more songs on the cd. But it’s good to check this number regularly because there’s nothing worse than putting together a mix you love only to find that the last five songs aren’t going to fit on. Clearly, if you’re not putting this on a cd (and fewer and fewer of us will be), you’re not bound by this parameter.
I find it’s important to get your first and last songs right. The first song needs to draw your audience in, so I like an upbeat song to get you started. And the final song is that last taste you’re leaving people with. I like something a bit quieter here to send your listener out on a peaceful note. “Silent Night†would be a good choice here or “O Holy Night.â€
In between those I try to alternate every couple of songs, upbeat for a couple, then slow for one or two. Listen to your mix several times. If you find you’ve stopped hearing it or you get bored, move your songs around to create better transitions or bump the song that bored you. Sometimes a song sounds perfect by itself but just refuses to play nicely with any of its neighboring tunes.
Finally, don’t forget to come up with a catchy title for your mix and artwork for it if you’re making cds.
And, as with any holiday endeavor, try to remember you’re doing this because it’s fun and you like Christmas music. If it becomes too much of a hassle, by all means stop. There’s nothing wrong with just putting albums on the stereo or computer or listening to an all-Christmas stream or radio station. This way gives you a unique and special holiday mix, but it’s definitely less important than spending time with your loved ones. And there’s always next year.