Happy Holidays! And some winners...

I'll be taking the rest of the week off to spend time with family, drink lots of hot chocolate and catch up with my reading. I'll be popping in to Twitter and Instagram from time to time if you want to keep up with me during my blogging break.

Now to the important part of today's post! I used the Random Number Generator to pick the numbers and the winners are comments #3 and #10 so congrats to Ashley and Katie F.! Email me your addresses at hearthandhomefront (at) gmail dot com and I'll get the books out to you!

Thank you to everyone who participated!

I hope your holidays are filled with lots of joy and laughter, good food and good company!

Gingerbread

I had a moment of panic this morning when I realized that Christmas is the beginning of next week not the end. Which means as soon as I hit "publish" on this post I will be in a whirlwind of wrapping followed by standing in giant lines with other panicked people at the UPS store and/or Post Office. Yikes. Someday, we'll be back on the east coast near family and I will be able to finish my shopping on the 24th like I prefer to :)

Yes, I wrote all my papers the night before they were due in college and grad school too.

This gingerbread is a winter favorite. It's a bit sticky and the flavor is stronger than other recipes due to the fresh ginger in it. I love to wrap this up as gifts, serve it for dessert around the holidays and eat it for breakfast with a cup of tea. I'll keep making it until the weather warms up in the spring too! It's too good to keep around for only a month every year.

Are you a last minute shopper/baker/shipper too? 

Gingerbread
adapted from Nigella Christmas

1 stick plus 3 tbsp unsalted butter
3/4 cup dark corn syrup
3/4 cup molasses
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp baking soda dissolved in 2 tbsp warm water
1 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups all purpose flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking dish with parchment paper and butter or nonstick spray the sides of the pan.
Over medium heat, melt the butter, sugar, syrup, molasses, and spices in a saucepan until they are combined.
Off the heat add in the milk, eggs and baking soda dissolved in water.
Pour the flour into a large bowl, and add in the liquid ingredients mixture. Beat the mixture until totally mixed together-make sure to watch out for flour clumps. Don't panic that the batter is too liquid either-it's supposed to be.
Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 45-50 minutes. Cool in the pan before slicing and sprinkling with powdered sugar if you'd like.

New Traditions

This year I've decided to do something slightly different for an Advent calendar. My mother always picked out beautiful advent calendars when I was growing up and I loved opening the new window each day to see the picture behind it. We've done the traditional version for the last few years with the boys and while my oldest really enjoys it, my youngest is still in that stage where he is more likely to hide with it and open all the windows at once. I needed something that could make the waiting each day worth it for him.

I thought about the lovely calendars where it is an activity to do together each day, or an easily replaceable treat. I really do love those ideas but when it comes down to it I need to be better about not creating more work for myself this time of year…and I just knew that I couldn't pull it off without dissolving into a puddle of stress.

Then this post showed up in my blog feed, and I found more examples on Pinterest. Anne took all their holiday books and wrapped them up so the children could open one each day. I had just pulled out all our Christmas and New Years books and popped them in a basket for easy browsing in the living room. Turning something we do anyway into a new holiday tradition? It was perfect!

I wrapped a piece of craft paper around each book and labeled them with a number. We didn't quite have 24, so I ordered a few extra from Amazon and ran to the library to fill out the last few. The boys are really excited to open a "present" each day and I'm looking forward to making our afternoon reading time a little more special. I'm trying so hard to embrace the love and joy during the holidays now and push back the stress and chaos that often overtakes me.

I realized as I was putting the basket together that many of my favorite holiday memories revolve around books. Every year we read The Polar Express on Christmas Eve (we still do!). I remember getting my very first Nancy Drew book and listening to my Mom read it over Christmas break. I still cook from The Frugal Gourmet Cookbook my Nana gave me when I was 6. (Remember this Apple Cobbler?) I'm hoping that in the midst of the visits with Santa and wish lists and art projects we do each December that my children will find some joy in our books too.

Here are the books I've wrapped up! What are your holiday favorites?

1. Elf on the Shelf
2. The Night Before Christmas (board book)
3. Frosty the Snowman
4. Santa's Reindeer
5. William and the Christmas Moon
6. Snowmen at Christmas
7. The Bears' Christmas
8. My First Christmas
9. The Pirates Night Before Christmas
10. Llama Llama Holiday Drama
11. The Dinosaurs Night Before Christmas
12. The Night Before Christmas (This cut paper version is stunning!)
13. New Clothes for New Year's Day
14. The Polar Express
15. Spirit of Christmas
16. Olive the Other Reindeer
17. How the Grinch Stole Christmas
18. The Nutcracker
19. Merry Christmas, Strega Nona
20. The Gingerbread Man
21. Twelve Days of Christmas
22. Charlie Brown Christmas
23. The Snowman
24. Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas

(some of these are affiliate links-thanks for supporting Hearth and Homefront!)

Simple Cranberry Sauce

What kind of cranberry sauce did you grow up with? Did you even eat it? As we moved around the country I've discovered that it seems to be a much less important part of the Thanksgiving meal outside of New England.

Despite growing up in an area full of cranberry bogs (we used to ice skate on them every winter!) I was a die-hard canned cranberry sauce girl until a few years ago. I decided to try making it myself one year, but once I realized that making jellied cranberry sauce is a bit of a pain, I went the relish route. In fact, I discovered that you can use an immersion blender or food processor to get rid of the big chunks of berries. That makes it a whole lot easier to convert lovers of canned sauce. And children!  My boys can't be the only ones who need to dissect every food that is even slightly chunky to determine what every bite contains.

The cranberry flavor shines through in this simple sauce. The ginger and orange complement the berries, and there is just enough sugar to tone down the tartness. I suggest tasting it as you cook so that you can be sure that the sweetness level is what you prefer. Initially I tried to eliminate the white sugar completely, but I realized you need just a little bit more than the brown sugar to get it right so I played around with the proportions to get it right.
As a bonus you can even make this the day before to help ease the cooking burden on the big day.

Are your menus all set? Turkey's defrosting? 

Simple Cranberry Sauce
adapted from A Cozy Kitchen

Ingredients:

1 bag cranberries 1/4 cup brown sugar 2 tbsp white sugar 1/4 tsp salt 1/2 cup water zest and juice of one orange (I used 2 clementines) 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 tsp grated fresh ginger 1 cinnamon stick 1 star anise

Put all the ingredients in a sauce pan and simmer for 15-20 minutes (stirring regularly) until all the cranberries have popped and started to break down. Taste it and adjust seasoning-especially the sugar. Add more white sugar if it's too tart, but one tablespoon at a time, tasting as you go. Once you have it the way you want it, set it aside to cool and thicken.

How to Prep your Pantry for the Holidays

We're headed straight into the holiday season now. Just a few more weeks and then it's almost a constant stream of holidays until 2014. Yikes. I haven't even figured out the complete list of people we need to shop for yet! And don't get me started on holiday cards…

I'm a little less anxious about all the cooking I'm going to do over the next few months though because I've slowly been stocking up my pantry with things I know I'll need. A last minute request from school or a hostess to bring a dessert or snack becomes so much less stressful if I know that 95% (or 100%) of what I need for a recipe is my kitchen already. Since I know that we will all be doing a whole lot of baking over the next 8 weeks I wanted to give you a peek into my pantry essentials. For each category I'll lay out the basic item you'll need and the items that might also be helpful for you.


Flours: All purpose at the minimum, and whatever else you prefer based on your household-whole wheat, cake flour, gluten free, almond or coconut flour.

Sugar: Granulated sugar (regular or extra fine), and brown sugar to start. You may want to keep alternative sweeteners around too, like maple syrup, honey or agave.

Spices: Cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg are the big ones in holiday baking. You'll notice in the picture I used the whole spices and that's simply because they are prettier than the ground containers. The ground spices will be your starting point, but I find that the holidays is the one time of year I really go through cinnamon sticks and whole cloves regularly. Check Amazon or World Market for good deals on the whole spices.

Flavorings: Vanilla extract (make your own-it's easy!), jars of pumpkin puree (NOT pumpkin pie filling), molasses, and a variety of baking chocolate. I always keep bittersweet, unsweetened and semi-sweet baking bars, a container of unsweetened cocoa powder and whatever bag of chocolate chips catches my eye. It's amazing what a different type of baking chip can do to change up a recipe! Try butterscotch, cinnamon or mint chocolate chips in your favorite cookie recipe.

In the fridge: Eggs and butter of course, but heavy whipping cream, buttermilk and cream cheese give you lots of options too.

Odds and Ends: Parchement paper. Seriously, what I did before I discovered this stuff I don't know. I use it when I roll out pie crust, for lining baking sheets, dividing layers of cookies when packing them, and more. A good non-stick spray-this Baker's Joy happens to be my favorite, but use whichever one you like. I try to stay away from anything with a flavor though. A variety of cookie cutters makes the endless round of holiday cookies fun. In the picture you can see our family favorite-an airplane! With two boys and a pilot in the family what else could it be?  :)

Packaging: I'm going to do a more detailed packaging post as part of my Gifts from the Kitchen series but think about jars that you can re-purpose, disposable tupperware, clear gift bags and of course, pretty paper!

What are your holiday baking essentials? What's your favorite thing to cook during this season?