Busman's Holiday

Today was chilly, windy and in the morning, cloudy.  A perfect day to completely cover every square inch of counter space I have with flour, eggs, butter and lots of other baking detritus.  My sister is always bugging me to make her cookies, but I never do.  They never taste as good two days after they're baked!  But this year, I was at a loss as to what else to give her, so I made some.  Lots of them, actually.  I made peanut butter blossoms with Hershey's kisses in the centers, marmalade cookies with tangerine glaze, butternut squash-walnut cookies, cranberry-walnut-orange bread and mincemeat coffee cakes. Those of you who were at the Clinch Valley Handweavers' Guild Christmas party yesterday tasted the lovely mincemeat coffee cake that Ginny Shaner brought.  I emailed her this morning and asked for the recipe.  Instead of the brown sugar glaze she used, I used up the remaining tangerine glaze, and also made some lemon glaze.  My mincemeat has a lot of candied lemon, orange and grapefruit zest in it, since I made it, so the glazes should be good with it.  

 

 And what would my Sunday be without bread?  I made some sourdough bread today, using only sourdough as the leavening.  I'm not always brave enough to try it without adding yeast, but I had all day today for it to rise three times, and it came out fine.  The crumb structure was more dense than I wanted, but the sour taste with the white whole wheat was lovely with leftover chili.  

  Everything is wrapped and jarred and cleaned up. The gifts are ready to give out in the coming week. Everyone have a sweet week!