Christmas food

We cut down on the amount of truffles we made this year for Christmas, but then we invented all sorts of other stuff to make.

The truffles are Bailey’s-flavored. Here they are with the dulce de leche candies that Joe invented. He started with this recipe (the cheater one that starts with condensed sweetened milk), and then rolled the caramel into balls and coated them in chocolate. Then he topped them with sea salt. I’ll admit I was skeptical, but they’re good - not chewy, and not hard candy, but somewhere in between.

Then we made these delicious sables, which I always eat at the “very French bakery” at the Pike Place market but which I have never made before. We added chopped toasted almonds to this recipe. They are my favorite Christmas treat we made this year.

Oh, but we weren’t finished yet! I also made one of my favorite Christmas cookie recipes from my mom, a chocolate-maraschino cherry cookie, but substituted candied orange peel for the cherries. They would have been really good, but I spaced out while measuring the flour, so the cookies are a little tough. This may be a result of me trying to distract myself from having contractions on and off all week.

And then, there was the homemade butter! Here’s Joe taking it out of the mixer:

We used this recipe, which was surprisingly hard to find. Most butter recipes call for you to shake the cream in a jar, which must take a ridiculously long time, judging by how long it took us to make it in a mixer. It’s really delicious. And you get buttermilk as a byproduct, which I am looking forward to using for scones.

Merry Christmas, everyone!