Winter Holiday Thread

[Dr. MD MD]

[Dr. MD MD]

Ball drop. Heh heh.

[Gd5150]

Happy New Year Gabbers!

2019 gonna be yuge!

[Dr. MD MD]

Happy New Year Gabbers!

2019 gonna be yuge!

Yes! The globalists are all going down this year.

[Metron2267]

[Metron2267]

[pyewacket]

So starts a new year of Bellgab cheer.

degrees needed to be a forensic anthropologist

[pyewacket]

I am sorry that I did not find this video sooner, but I thought it was worth posting as a positive message of the season to counteract all the negativity of late.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNbSgMEZ_Tw

[pate]

Since I wasn’t able to search for a more appropriate thread to put this in (I thought there was a Christmas thread last year) this will have to do. I really enjoy Bithead. I don’t know if he knows about Bellgab but he really seems like Bellgab material to me. Great rants!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk_76TNg694

Can't find the thread?  It's right hear, doc!

-p

[Dr. MD MD]

Can't find the thread?  It's right hear, doc!

-p

Thanks, pate!

[Asuka Langley]

https://twitter.com/RaxKingIsDead/status/1205933632575156224

[nooryisawesome]

[Lilith]

[Lilith]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYSWq-hpB5o

[Dr. MD MD]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYSWq-hpB5o

Thurl Ravenscroft is the singer. Even his name sounds bassy. He was also the voice of Tony the Tiger.

[Lilith]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HfPF1CskY8

[Lilith]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gush7b-KWrs&list=PLeLlr9BUN8wNOd5o0LvBbpfaK-ZxCGtt-&index=33

[pyewacket]

To all you Bellgabbers.

Here's an old favorite that RGR posted in the thread a ways back. It's worth a look and has become one of my holiday favorites.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klouw-V0JpA

[pyewacket]

Squee! (the expression of great delight- not the comic book character)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDHTyzBRvAQ

[pyewacket]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLFvA_ozB54

[K_Dubb]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLFvA_ozB54

Well now that looks like a proper cake!  I like how she just dumps stuff in -- that is how I aspire to bake.  And no leavener at all except the eggs sounds like a real historic recipe.  Some really interesting points, too:

1. Marzipan to sugar at 1:2?  I have been doing 1:1 this whole time!  It must be very sticky and even harder to roll out.
2. The batter does not look over-mixed.  I have noticed some commercial cakes (small bakery types, not giant chain ones) over there have this wonderful, crumbly texture that might come from approximating hand-mixing rather than trying to blend it all into submission with a mixer.  I will give that at try.
3.  Papering the outside of the tin must act sort of like one of your cake bands!
4.  Dried cherries sound like a modern ingredient to me.  I like them, but would love to see the citation.
5.  Six hours!  That is like my grandma who overbaked her cakes by modern standards saying that the butter will keep it moist.  In my theory this represents a completely different aesthetic designed for keeping for weeks, shaving off little pieces for a special treat, where moisture would encourage mold.  At six hours in a low oven you are mostly dehydrating it.

[pyewacket]

K_Dubb- Commercial products are made with enhancers and emulsions not available to the home baker, but there are a few methods you can try. 

All the ingredients should be room temperature, otherwise a colder ingredient will cause separation when mixing, if this does occur, you can add a tablespoon of flour. Keeping the mixing speed low can prevent the gluten from stretching. High speeds when adding flour can result in a heavy, denser texture like bread.

Also, a higher ratio of self rising to all purpose flour combinations can result in a drier, more compact crumb.

Adding baking powder to a self rising/all purpose mix can give you more of a 'lift' of leavening. Sometimes the 'all in one method' of mixing does not aerate the batter sufficiently.

Hope that helps and let us know the results of your experiments.

Merry Christmas, K_Dubb. 

[K_Dubb]

K_Dubb- Commercial products are made with enhancers and emulsions not available to the home baker, but there are a few methods you can try. 

All the ingredients should be room temperature, otherwise a colder ingredient will cause separation when mixing, if this does occur, you can add a tablespoon of flour. Keeping the mixing speed low can prevent the gluten from stretching. High speeds when adding flour can result in a heavy, denser texture like bread.

Also, a higher ratio of self rising to all purpose flour combinations can result in a drier, more compact crumb.

Adding baking powder to a self rising/all purpose mix can give you more of a 'lift' of leavening. Sometimes the 'all in one method' of mixing does not aerate the batter sufficiently.

Hope that helps and let us know the results of your experiments.

Merry Christmas, K_Dubb.

Merry Christmas, Pye!  And thank you for the insights.  I think I will actually try this by hand, with an old wooden spoon, though the thought of blending that heavy batter well makes my forearms ache already!

I am really curious about the dried cherries, having never encountered them in old (100+ years) recipes.  Especially in England, where the climate doesn't lend itself to sun-drying a wet fruit like a cherry -- they would have to be imported and very expensive.  I don't even remembering seeing dried cherries on the market here until maybe 20 years ago.

This is like the issue with currants, which do show up in a lot of old recipes, and the debate over whether they meant the local, northern-growing true currants (red and black) or imported small raisins (the suggested etymology for "currant" proposes a derivation from "Corinth" on the Med) which, thanks to a little tartness, could approximate the flavor.  True currants would be easier to dry, I think, being rather fleshy, but they have a sour and bitter edge that no raisin can hope to approach.  Europeans have been using currants since time immemorial but dried ones are nearly impossible to find; they're usually used for jelly.  I only use dried blackcurrants after first steeping in hot syrup to tame the sourness.  I think for baking they probably meant the little imported raisins.

You run into the same confusion with "plum" (as in plum pudding) which everybody tells us is really a raisin, not a prune.  I don't buy that for a minute.  People back then knew what a plum was since they grew all over.  We just think that way because, to us, prunes are a chore and not a treat and people go "ew" at a prune cake, whereas in E Europe prunes are commonly used for fillings and even just coated with chocolate as a candy.  When sugar was rare and expensive back then the simple sweetness of a prune must have seemed heavenly, well worth putting in a cake.  And good luck pulling out a raisin with your thumb, as in the rhyme.  Next they will say figgy pudding has no figs.  It is a pack of lies.

I feel like people proffering supposed old recipes are always sneaking modern things into them because those old recipes really aren't that good.  Like that cake Shreddie posted that was really a modern sponge cake.  You know how on recipe sites nobody actually makes the recipe as written and 90% of the comments are telling you what wonderfully creative things they did to improve it?  It's like that.  It makes me so mad!  When you are doing historical baking you should get as close as you can with modern ingredients (which is a whole new discussion -- all flour was whole wheat 200 years ago but sifted into finer grades than you can buy now, for example) and resist the urge to tinker, otherwise it's not Mrs. Beeton's, it's yours!  There is a huge conspiracy to ratchet up our palates to ever-more-indulgent desserts where the kind of treats in which our grandparents delighted are relegated to the dustbin of history leaving us culinarily impoverished, adrift from our moorings, waddling around aimlessly.

I made Mrs. Beeton's seed cake, you may recall, and it was perfectly edible but kind of weird.  But there is no doubt in my mind that, up against a Costco sheet cake (which I won't touch) it would go unloved and uneaten, the poor thing.  Then I would feel terribly guilty and have to eat it all myself and grow immensely fat on all that butter and sugar.  I think next time I will make a tiny Mrs. Beeton's seed muffin just for me, sit in a corner with it, and glower superciliously at the porcine herd shoving their faces with buttercream and fighting over the corners because that's where most of the frosting is.  I told my particularly ravenous uncle last Thanksgiving (where some thoughtless fool showed up with a Costco cake because it was someone's birthday, too) that I could just whip up a giant bowl of chocolate buttercream in a few minutes to leave in the fridge and eat with a spoon if that's what he thought was good.  Pah!  Philistines.

[K_Dubb]

Since I am on a roll, let me light into sugarplums for a minute, in keeping with the Christmas theme.  When I was little I used to imagine they were candied plums -- I will not say glacé like the English, who are always whoring after French words when perfectly good English words exist for a thing.  Instead, they are comfits, one of the oldest sweets around, -- I'm guessing that etymologically it's a corrupted form of "confection" which should give you some idea of how old it is.  A modern example would be jordan almonds, those pastel-colored things people put out at weddings and usually ignore:  a nut or seed cooked in syrup which crystallizes around it, forming a candy crust.  In Indian groceries you can usually find little bags of candied fennel seeds done the same way which are invaluable when it comes to baking centuries-old sweet-bun recipes which frequently call for comfits.

Jordan almonds are really delicious if you can find good ones suffused with almond and floral flavors, probably rose- or orange-blossom water originally but the dreadful things you sometimes see at drugstores are a pale imitation of the real thing, and usually so old and neglected (because nobody ever buys them) they will crack your teeth.  In the good ones that don't just have a cheap candy coating the almond in the center is tender and infused with the exotic, flavored syrup in which it's cooked.

The name "sugar plum" makes perfect sense if you think of it as a plum made of sugar with the almond taking the place of the stone.  Even the shape is similar to those little pointed plums like what we call Italian prunes, or even Shreddie's damsons, a concentrated sugar hit well capable of inspiring dancing visions in children's minds.

[starrmtn001]

I am sorry that I did not find this video sooner, but I thought it was worth posting as a positive message of the season to counteract all the negativity of late.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNbSgMEZ_Tw

Blessed Be, my friend.  Here is another.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsUDKopLOE4

[albrecht]

Since I am on a roll, let me light into sugarplums for a minute, in keeping with the Christmas theme.  When I was little I used to imagine they were candied plums -- I will not say glacé like the English, who are always whoring after French words when perfectly good English words exist for a thing.  Instead, they are comfits, one of the oldest sweets around, -- I'm guessing that etymologically it's a corrupted form of "confection" which should give you some idea of how old it is.  A modern example would be jordan almonds, those pastel-colored things people put out at weddings and usually ignore:  a nut or seed cooked in syrup which crystallizes around it, forming a candy crust.  In Indian groceries you can usually find little bags of candied fennel seeds done the same way which are invaluable when it comes to baking centuries-old sweet-bun recipes which frequently call for comfits.

Jordan almonds are really delicious if you can find good ones suffused with almond and floral flavors, probably rose- or orange-blossom water originally but the dreadful things you sometimes see at drugstores are a pale imitation of the real thing, and usually so old and neglected (because nobody ever buys them) they will crack your teeth.  In the good ones that don't just have a cheap candy coating the almond in the center is tender and infused with the exotic, flavored syrup in which it's cooked.

The name "sugar plum" makes perfect sense if you think of it as a plum made of sugar with the almond taking the place of the stone.  Even the shape is similar to those little pointed plums like what we call Italian prunes, or even Shreddie's damsons, a concentrated sugar hit well capable of inspiring dancing visions in children's minds.

Ha. I have not thought of Jordan Almonds in years. What happened to them? Good but, yes, bitewith care. They seemed to have gone the way of ashtrays and candy dishes.  Btw I thought sugar plums mighta been "sugar teats"- stuff in old days given to kids. Cheese cloth, brandy, etc to help with teething (that is, the Benadyrl method of old.)

[pate]

Hear in Kansas City, down at the River Market are a couple of spice stores, where you can buy bulk spices for $1-2 a "scoop."  Probably 1/4-1/2 cup of most stuff, never tried to get saffron, that's probably not a buck or two a scoop.  In E How, one of them sells Jordan Almonds, which are apparently a traditional thing at Middle Eastern/haji weddings.  They are usually fresh, not hunks of concrete.

I first ate them in the old "Whitman's Sampler" as a kid around Christmas.  One of my "Great Aunts" (who apparently wasn't related at all, just an old friend of my grandmother's that we called "Aunt Beth" so the "Great Aunt" was sort of a joke) would buy all the kids a Whitman's Sampler each for Christmas.

I always ate the Jordan Almonds first, and wished they put more than 2 or 3 in the box...

Our local Russel Stover company apparently bought the Whitman's Sampler rights ages ago, but recently has allowed the brand to decline:  old days it was 2-3 pounds of candy, probably thirty or so different things, double decker.  Now a days it's maybe a half dozen candies of the blah variety...

Think I have an old box around somewhere that I keep junk in, if I find it I will take a few pica...

Whitman's Samplers (the original not today's version) are strongly associated with Christmas in my mind.

ediot:  Casa Senda has nothing on the vast amounts of crap I have squirrelled away and piled around.  I did manage to find the bottom half of one, but the lid with the listing of candies is missing.  I assume it is hanging out with my military flashlight somewhere.

Anyhow, an image search turned up this:



Which is a far cry from today's version:

[K_Dubb]

You are lucky to have fresh ones.  I am not sure about their origins.  Anything almond would have to come from pretty far south, of course, but candying nuts that way goes back at least to the middle ages in Europe, probably earlier, to judge by the recipes that call for them.  We have just forgotten.

I'm sure they are another thing Marco Polo brought from China.

[Asuka Langley]

My favorite Christmas candy is Christmas Tree Nougat. My grandma would have a huge bowl full of it and we would take handfuls of it and go down in her basement and chew it a few times until it got soft and sticky and throw it at the wall and ceiling and laugh.

We would also do experiments with her laundry products in the basement on the holidays. We took my grandpas work thermos one of them old ugly green ones. Filled it up with bleach and some other cleaners I'm not sure what they were i think some of it was powdered detergent. Then my cousin said that mixing bleach with stuff could make poisonous gas and we kinda freaked out and screwed the lid on it and sat it back on the shelf like nothing happened. But then it started rocking and we thought it was going to explode so we throw it as far into the crawl space as we could. Which happened to be right under the living room where all of the adults were. Then we were going to try and get it back out so it didn't explode and kill someone but we didn't want to crawl though dirt and over a bunch of HVAC ducting so we said fuck it. It never did explode so Christmas was not ruined but my grandmas red coat we wiped up spilled bleach with did lulz.

[Dr. MD MD]

My favorite Christmas candy is Christmas Tree Nougat. My grandma would have a huge bowl full of it and we would take handfuls of it and go down in her basement and chew it a few times until it got soft and sticky and throw it at the wall and ceiling and laugh.

We would also do experiments with her laundry products in the basement on the holidays. We took my grandpas work thermos one of them old ugly green ones. Filled it up with bleach and some other cleaners I'm not sure what they were i think some of it was powdered detergent. Then my cousin said that mixing bleach with stuff could make poisonous gas and we kinda freaked out and screwed the lid on it and sat it back on the shelf like nothing happened. But then it started rocking and we thought it was going to explode so we throw it as far into the crawl space as we could. Which happened to be right under the living room where all of the adults were. Then we were going to try and get it back out so it didn't explode and kill someone but we didn't want to crawl though dirt and over a bunch of HVAC ducting so we said fuck it. It never did explode so Christmas was not ruined but my grandmas red coat we wiped up spilled bleach with did lulz.

Grandma got blown up by a reindeer...