Christmas 2017

I'm mostly making easy stuff for Christmas dinner, but we're also doing some baking, and I need a place to keep track of all my links.

We barely touched the Cranberry Waldorf I made on Thanksgiving this year, so I'm not making it for Christmas.  I've decided to do stuffed mushrooms though because they are one of my favorite foods.  I recall making a batch and eating the entire thing for dinner once when I was pregnant and Sameer was out of town.  Here is my plan for Christmas dinner:

Crudites and Pumpernickel Bread with Homemade Ranch Dressing
This was my entire lunch on Thanksgiving, and it seems to work well for that.  Delicious and filling, yet light enough that I can eat such a heavy dinner without feeling ill.

Gardein Vegetarian Turk'y Cutlets
Tastier and easier than any holiday fake meat (or real meat) I've ever made (or eaten).  I had to go to all the stores to finally find them at Mariano's before Thanksgiving, but now the local Jewel has them too.

Boxed Mashed Potatoes
Again, easy and tasty.  Sameer, Simran, and I all prefer the taste over from scratch potatoes that require me to use and clean my ricer.  I use a box of Idaho potato flake, milk, butter, and salt.  Don't judge.

Green Bean Casserole 

Stuffed Mushrooms with Horseradish Cream Sauce

Candied Pears 

I haven't decided on a dessert yet.  I might bake a cake or pie, or I might pick one up from a store.  Simran will help decide.  So far she has suggested a pink cake.


Christmas Baking:

Cranberry White Chocolate Scones
I haven't made these in years.  I figure Sameer can take the leftovers to work or we can pawn them off on neighbors.

Gingerbread Cookies with Royal Icing
I made the dough yesterday and we'll finish the cookies today.  The royal icing I made from a can of Wilton's vanilla flavored egg powder last year was beautiful but tasted cloying and weirdly chemically (maybe it was just the vanilla flavor, I don't know), so I'm getting a carton of pasteurized egg white product and trying a from scratch recipe this year.  It doesn't sound harder.

ETA:  Christmas Dessert
Dark Chocolate Peppermint Cake
I'm going to use this black magic cake recipe, which I've made before and is wonderful, and I'm going to use this candy cane cake's peppermint frosting recipe as the basis for the frosting.  Except I'm using butter in place of margarine and going to use 1 tsp of peppermint extract (which I think I already have on hand in my baking box) and taste the frosting before adding a second teaspoon.  The candy cane cake reviewers indicated that the frosting is the best part and some mentioned using it on chocolate cake, so my hope is that this combination will have a sort of peppermint bark flavor.  I think I'll also use a drop of food coloring to tint the frosting pink since I don't plan to roll the thing in candy canes or do anything else that would be a solid tip off to the flavor.  Unless I can find tiny candy cane-shaped cake candies.  Or maybe if I put peppermint candies in the food processor and turned them to dust they could be sprinkles.  We'll see.  [Edited 12/29/2017:  This chocolate cake was exquisite as usual, but the peppermint and cream cheese flavors just didn't meld.  It was fine, and we ate some, and Sameer is still eating the leftovers, but if I made this again I would use a vanilla buttercream frosting as the base and just add peppermint extract, not use cream cheese.]