The Bauer Confidential

It’s hard to get in the holiday spirit here.  Perhaps it’s the spring-like weather, but the bay area is just not very conducive to Christmas Cheer.  It could also be that we’re away from all our family, and even had to skip out on church and seeing friends because yours truly has a nasty cold (germs do not make good presents).  I’ve been thinking about what Christmas was like for me as a child and imagining what it will be like for Jocelyn.  When I was young, Christmas vacation seemed to last forever.  It felt like every day was Saturday, camped out in front of my grandparents’ TV, watching cartoons and playing with cousins.  A never ending supply of cookies and fudge was always present, I was probably bouncing off the walls (have my parents tell you about the effect of sugar on me as a little girl, there are some great stories).  I remember piles of wrapping paper and mad searches for the right kind of batteries.  What I don’t really remember are the presents, though they were always nice, I don’t have concrete memories of gifts.  I do have vivid recollections of the emotions, the love, the fun.

Every family has their own set of traditions, my mom’s family always opened gifts Christmas Eve after a dinner of Oyster stew.  At my Dad’s parents, I remember eating at the children’s table through many years of hams and turkeys.  I’m excited to make new traditions for our little family, but we’re not starting from scratch.  Though we didn’t put up a tree or do gifts this year with Jocelyn being so young, I did make the traditional Bauer family holiday breakfast, Monkey Bread.  I thought I’d share the recipe as part of our holiday wishes.  Be warned, this is very sweet, and could have your kids bouncing off the walls!

Monkey Bread

4 cups biscuits (one can “Grands” biscuits, I like the flaky layer kind, but plain work well too)

1/2 cup sugar

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 cup brown sugar, loosely packed

1/2 cup butter (1 stick)

1.  Preheat oven to 350oF.  Grease a simple bundt cake pan.

2.  Mix together the sugar and cinnamon.

3.  Cut the biscuits into 1/2 inch pieces.  Roll the pieces in the cinnamon/sugar mixture and then distribute evenly in the pan.  Sprinkle some of the remaining sugar mixture over the biscuits if you’re a fan of cinnamon like me.

4.  Melt the butter in a sauce pan, add the brown sugar and bring to a boil.  Pour over the biscuits.

5.  Bake approximately 20 minutes or until well browned and cooked through.

6.  Try not to eat the whole thing by yourself!

In college, I had a roommate from Japan.  I brought her to my parents’ house for Easter one year, thought she would enjoy the experience of a “typical” American holiday meal.  I will never forget her perplexed expression when I tried to explain the Jello salad to her, “But there’s no lettuce!” she had exclaimed.  Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that there might be something unusual about Jello salad.  At every family holiday, at every potluck, and family reunion, for my entire childhood and even to this day, someone has always brought some sort of Jello salad.  And I’m proud to admit, that like no-bake cheesecake, rice-krispie treats, and Kraft mac-n-cheese, I love Jello salad.  I currently reside in, what may very well be, the most snobbish place on earth when it comes to food.  With the climate here, great fresh food is available year-round, and I love that, I really do, but I also like a lot of things any self-respecting “foodie” would turn his or her nose up at in a jiffy.  The thing is I love all good food, I’m not prejudiced, give me a good old-fashioned mid-western meal of steak, corn on the cob, baked potato and jello salad and I’m one happy camper.

With my favorite holiday fast approaching, I received an unanticipated request, to bring a jello salad to Thanksgiving dinner in SF.  I shouldn’t really be surprised, about half of the attendants will be displaced mid-westerners, but I find it funny all the same.  A few years back, we went to a wonderful Turkey Day celebration given by the same couple who will be our hosts this year.  For that holiday, I prepared my family’s traditional holiday Jello-salad.  This layered strawberry and sour cream salad was a specialty of my maternal grandmother.  When I was a teenager and learned how to make this dish myself, I remember being a bit dismayed that there was a layer of sour cream between two layers of sweet jello, it just didn’t seem right.  I’ve since gotten over that initial quibble, and love that jello salad dearly, but I’m not going to make it this year.  It doesn’t travel well.  The year we took it the city, the BART trip caused its carefully deposited layers to slip and slide, so it wasn’t as appetizing as it had been when we left home, but it still tasted good.  I thought however, that I would share the recipe with anyone who reads this blog, should they feel like a traditional Cook family holiday dish.

Grandma Cook’s Strawberry Sour Cream Jello Salad

Directions

I’ve been lurking around a few on-line cooking communities for a few years now.  You see, I have a problem, an addiction really, I love to bake.  And I can judge that by the tightness in my jeans these past few days, this obsession is starting to take its toll.  So I’m officially on a diet, but before I started I finished all the sweets in the house so as not to be tempted by them (I know this sounds counter-productive, but you start diets your way, and I’ll start them mine).  Before cutting down on my baked goods, last week I had a particularly annoying day in lab (why is there one stupid, tiny, little box on the RT-PCR machine that you must click if you want it to actually record your data, why is it so darn small?), and what better way to recover than baking.  I’d bought a couple cake mixes and frostings on sale a few weeks back with the plan of making some cake truffles.  After seeing them made here, and then checking out Bakarella’s amazing creations, I thought I should give them a try.

So I baked up a Devil’s Food Cake, I took a picture of the cake because, though boring, it was a nice flat looking cake.  No it wasn’t attacked by a vampire, those two holes in the center are from testing it with toothpicks.

Once the cake has cooled, you tear it up.  You heard me right, you take that nice cake and demolish it.  It’s sort of cathartic.  This is what it looks like.

Then you mix in a can of frosting, I used cream-cheese (Bakarella’s favorite).  I tasted it at this stage and thought it was a little bland, so I added some mint extract.

I let it cool and then rolled it into balls, which I then put in the freezer.  I coated the balls with a mixture of 60% Cacoa Ghiradelli chips and Guittard mint chips (with a few vanilla melts thrown in to give it a nice consistency).  Here’s the final result.

They were pretty tasty and well recieved by my co-workers.  I honestly would prefer a nice piece of cake with frosting.  If I were going to do this again, I’d use a chocolate frosting with a chocolate cake because I think the cream-cheese frosting sort of diluted out the chocolate flavor.  I also used the whole can of frosting, which I think was a bit too much and the centers were really soft.  I doubt I’ll go to the trouble of making these again, unless I have a party or something where it would be fun to decorate.

Espresso Chocolate Cake

Check out my first recipe post, just click on the link above. If you like chocolate and coffee, make this cake, you won’t be sorry. If you don’t like coffee, make the cake with out the coffee, absolutely delicious.