No More Mr. Nice Pie
  • About
  • Blog
  • Pies About Town
  • Pie-Ku
  • Recipes
    • Recipe Index

HOW SWEET IT IS

12/3/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
No sooner had the tapered rolling pin mouthed the word “Uncle!” last week, than the sugar cookie dough began inching its way towards the bench. Dreidel cutters are warming up for an eight night engagement beginning Sunday evening. They are followed in hot pursuit by snowmen and reindeer, evergreen pine and snowflake blue food coloring. I quake in anticipation.
 
It seems counter intuitive to cram an overabundance of sweets into one month but holiday revelers are seldom known for embracing moderation. December’s food temptations are dizzying, sprawled across every food catalogue that crosses my threshold or stares back at me from the interweb. Admittedly, my line of work makes me a sweets enabler of sorts, just as guilty as Harry and David and Williams-Sonoma. Harry and David may lure you in with their glossy cover photo of Royal Riviera pears, but turn the page and you are up to your neck in towers of truffles and a seven pound serving of cheesecake. Chuck Williams goes straight for the sweet tooth with enough peppermint bark to induce both diabetic shock and a trip to the dentist.
 
In a modest attempt to tread cautiously into the early days of December, it seems appropriate to kick off the season in an orderly fashion. Hanukkah cookies are first up, blanketed in white and blue royal icing. As dreidels and stars stretched out on parchment to dry, it seemed a good time to inch over from sugar to spice. The analysis and preparation of two distinctive gingerbread cakes, generously spiced and weighty with molasses provided a warming mid-morning snack. Unable to decide which one reigned supreme, I had just a smidgen more to be certain. As a palate cleanser and a worthwhile use of my afternoon, I moved on to the curious cookie known in Southern circles as the Hello Dolly Bar and elsewhere as the 7-Layer Magic Bar.
 
Sheltered from 7-Layer Magic Bars in my youth, it wasn’t until college that I encountered this sugar coma in brick form. There are many variations, but traditionally graham cracker crumbs hunker down beneath obscene quantities of butter, chocolate chips, butterscotch morsels, sweetened flaked coconut and finally pecans. All of these ingredients are drowned in a sea of sweetened condensed milk. That is probably why they were never featured in my childhood. Sweetened condensed milk was simply not a part of Jessie’s pantry. It seems redundant to create an achingly sweet cookie using an ingredient dubbed ‘sweetened.’  Which may be why I opted to bow out of the butterscotch morsels and skip the sweetened condensed milk altogether. Homemade caramel with a good dose of salt makes for a better confection, although probably not the one most people identify with.
 
Preparing the caramel in a small space also reinforces one’s respect for fire safety. This seems most appropriate with the Festival of Lights waiting in the wings. The fact that the local fire department is situated just around the corner provides an additional sense of security. Watching the sugar turn from white to clear to amber, I silently make a holiday wish that there will be no need to summon the Captain and his fine team of firefighters. The month is young.
 
As Hanukkah nears, it seems unlikely that Hello-Dolly-7-Layer-Magic-Bars will usurp potato latkes from their rightful place on my Hanukkah menu. Then again, as inscribed on many a dreidel, this may be the year when a great miracle happens here. The miracle of remembering where on earth I put the new box of Hanukkah candles for safekeeping.
​
Picture
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013

    Ellen Gray

    Professional Pie-isms & Seasonal Sarcasm

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Artwork by Retsu Takahashi
© Ellen Gray All Rights Reserved 2014
  • About
  • Blog
  • Pies About Town
  • Pie-Ku
  • Recipes
    • Recipe Index