Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy! The Virtual Advent Tour has hosts for the next four days!

Today’s host will be Jane of A String of Pearls. I’ll stop by later to update this post after she’s had a chance to post her thoughts.

Instead of a full video/song, today you get a behind-the-scenes video at the recording of “Joy to the World” by the cast of Hamilton, because Hamilton.

The song is part of this year’s 2-disc Carols for a Cure album from Broadway Cares, an annual benefit for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. The album, which won’t be available for download until next year, can be purchased online.

With less than a week until Christmas, you’re probably simultaneously craving a sweet treat and looking for something that’s dead easy and fast. How about a no-bake, single-bowl cookie recipe?

These are great to make with kids, and if your kids are a little older and capable of using a mixer, they can make them without supervision.

Chocolate Snowball Cookies (this isn’t the name I grew up calling these cookies, but their original name, a catch-all term for native people such as the Inuits living in icy climates considered acceptable as recently as 20 years ago, is a term that’s gone out of vogue and is now considered racist)

In a bowl, combine:

• 1.5 sticks (12 Tbs) of softened butter (malleable but not drippy)
• 3/4 c sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 3 Tbs cocoa powder
• 2 cups oats (I prefer regular, because those oats are hardiest, but quick-cook also do fine; instant gives you a much mushier cookie, but will do in a pinch)

(If you’re crunched for time, you can put the dough in the fridge and make the cookies later.)

Take a spoonful of the dough and roll it in your hands to make a roughly spherical shape.

Roll the cookie in powdered sugar.

Voila! Pop it in your mouth or put aside for later.

Repeat.

Makes three dozen or so if you refrain from snacking while baking.

I find these so addictive that I recommend making a double batch so they don’t disappear before you realize it.

While you’re baking, here are a couple songs from Darlene Love, whom we were lucky enough to see last night. The first, “All Alone at Christmas,” is from Home Alone 2, written for her by Steven Van Zandt:

And the second is her signature Christmas song, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” first recorded for the 1963 Phil Spector-produced A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records and popularized for younger generations by being the final song of the annual Christmas episode of The Late Show with David Letterman (this is from 2005):

Because today marked the opening of the new Star Wars movie, I was tempted to find a copy of the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special to share with you, but as I’ve had to sit through it at least twice now in recent memory, I just couldn’t do that to you. It really is painful.

Instead, I thought I’d round up some of the old Christmas-themed radio shows that aired in the 1930s, ’40s, and early ’50s. Obviously I’m not old enough to have lived through the original airings, but growing up my library did have a nice collections of radio shows on cassette and my dad got us into the habit of listening to certain episodes year after year.

Back in the day, Lux Radio Theatre and Campbell Playhouse, among others, would offer hour-long radio adaptations of hit movies featuring many of the stars reprising their film roles. During intermission, the stars were expected to shill for the sponsor. (Lux sold soap; Campbell, as you know, sells soup.)

You can listen to adaptations of films you know and love, including It’s a Wonderful Life

and Miracle on 34th Street:

Less well-known productions include The Miracle of the Bells (starring Fred MacMurray, Valli, and Frank Sinatra)

and Come to the Stable (with Loretta Young and Celeste Holm):

And for family fun, here’s the collection of Cinnamon Bear, a children’s fantasy series that aired in 26 12-minute segments between Thanksgiving and Christmas:

I hope you enjoy these while you’re baking, wrapping gifts, or finishing your knitting/crafting projects.

I first encountered Dylan Thomas in college, when we had to read his radio play Under Milkwood for a freshman-year English class I took. After college, I lived in a town where one of the performance spaces did a reading of A Child’s Christmas in Wales every year as their Yule production. I was instantly transported back in time and across the sea:

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into the wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

Reading Thomas’ words is lovely, but it’s even better to hear Thomas himself read them to you:

Thomas first wrote and recorded pieces of this story in 1945 as a radio play for the BBC and, five years later, expanded it to be text we now know, which was published in the U.S. as an essay in Harper’s Bazaar—”A Child’s Memories of a Christmas in Wales.” When Thomas recorded it in 1952, only a year before his death at age 39, he shortened the title to what it’s been known as ever since, A Child’s Christmas in Wales. It was first published as a stand-alone book in 1955 and has become Thomas’ most popular work here in the U.S.

I can offer no personal assessment of it, but should you want to give it a shot, there’s a mid-1980s, made-for-tv film version of the story that’s got positive ratings at IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. It features Denholm Elliott, whom you may remember from his role in Raiders of the Lost Ark or A Room with a View:

I’ll leave you today with Welsh musician John Cale’s 1973 song, “Child’s Christmas in Wales,” inspired by Thomas’ essay:

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.