Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Christmas Baking: The good, the bad, and the ugly...

...the weekend had all three elements, in varying order.

Saturday started great. We bought our Christmas tree and got it set up in the house. I did a quick run to Trader Joe's to get pistachios and eggs. Then it was time for baking!

I made the fruitcake batter sans fruit in the mixer. Because I make so much fruitcake, there's no way the KitchenAid mixer can hold everything, so I always finish it in my giant mixing bowl.  I used mini-bundt pans, some larger paper bundt pans I found at Cost Plus, and a mini rose cake pan.
  • The good: The paper bundt pans worked great plus I don't have to unmold them!
  • The bad: The mini-bundt and rose pans are a giant P.I.T.A. when it comes to unmolding the fruitcakes (or any cakes). It took a good 30 minutes to get them out of the pans. Ugh!
  • The ugly: the fruitcakes in the rose pan were way to dark...not suitable for gift-giving. Scratch 6.
The rest of the day went well. My goal was to make all of the dough that had to be refrigerated and I met that goal, plus I baked another cookie!
  • The good: Made 7 doughs in preparation for Sunday.
  • The good: Baked the Cherry Kisses cookie; yield 40
On Sunday, we did a little house cleaning and I made a quick grocery run for dinner ingredients and other items. Then it was back to baking.

It's been colder than normal the last couple of weeks, so I was not totally surprised that the butter wasn't as soft as it should be after being on the counter for over an hour. I made the spritz dough, which was stiffer than normal. As I added the food coloring (last step), my mixer stopped beating. Hmmm. I removed the bowl and beater, and turned on the mixer. It was spinning just fine. Maybe the dough was just too cold. I finished adding the color by hand and baked the spritz.

Aunt Linda arrived after lunch. She started slicing and baking the refrigerated cookies, while I started the dough for Polvorones. After a couple of half-hearted beats, my mixer stopped again. Uh, oh. The beater would go around if there was nothing in the bowl, but as soon as there was any resistance, it stopped. Crap! It's dead, Jim!

I used my food processor to cream the butter and sugar for the Polvorones and finished the rest by hand. Linda, in the meantime, was cranking on the refrigerated dough. She did great. I turned my attention to making the sugared nuts, which do not require a mixer.
  • The good: Between the two of us, we baked 9 types of cookies on Sunday; yield 720.
  • The good: I made 13 cups of Grand Marnier Pecans and 14 cups of Amaretto Walnuts
  • The good: We tried a new cookie, Matcha Almond, that turned out much better than last year's failed Green Tea cookies.
  • The bad: I did not make two additional cookies that were on the To Do list.
  • The WAY UGLY: My workhorse mixer is on the injured list and I still have to make the biscotti! Sigh...
I told the Husband that we needed to find a repair place for my mixer. It's just too expensive to get a new mixer. Fortunately, the Daughter has a KitchenAid she can lend me, so it looks like biscotti day will still happen next Saturday.

The Husband read up on KitchenAid repair and found an excellent YouTube video that described how to diagnose the problem and hoe w to make the repairs.. It's looked pretty straight-forward, so he took the mixer apart yesterday and found the problem:

Chewed-up gear from my KitchenAid mixer

Yeah, gears aren't supposed to look like that! The replacement part is on the way.  When it arrives, he'll put everything back together. We're hoping that the problem will be fixed then. Keep your fingers crossed!
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